Divestment is Losing the Battle, Winning the War

Last Wednesday, Harvard’s local chapter of the national divestment campaign received a sharp and public rejection from university president Drew Faust, who released a public statement that she will not support reinvesting Harvard’s endowment portfolio away from fossil fuels. The letter has been billed as a massive disappointment for divesters, whose path to reshaping how Harvard invests its massive endowment is rapidly narrowing.
This narrative entirely misses the point of divestment. Divesters might have lost an important battle, but they’re winning the much more important war.
If you speak to those involved in divestment campaigns at Harvard or abroad, you quickly begin to understand that their strategy for combatting climate change is much more complex than simply moving a few billion dollars in investment away from fossil fuel companies. The most honest admit even Harvard divesting would not change the amount of CO2 emitted.
Divestment, you learn, is actually far more about the expressive value of Harvard’s investments and the buzz generated by the campaign. By forcing the university to change its investment practices, they argue, divesters can shape a narrative and conversation around fossil fuel companies that will help build a political and societal consensus about the need for action on climate change.
As former Senator and climate action proponent Tim Wirth told the HPR last year, “you talk about divestiture because it gives you a way to talk about the fossil fuel industry and how they’re killing the world. That’s an important thing to do. You start to have a narrative of fossil fuel.”
What the narrative of failure misses is that divestment has been remarkably effective at the goal of shaping conversations about climate change on college campuses. The movement has generated a remarkable amount of coverage, scoring frequent coverage in university dailies and a recent New York Times profile. Each of those articles offers activists another chance to speak publicly about the dangers of climate change and the role that fossil fuel companies play in perpetuating climate change.
In the quest to change the conversation around fossil fuel companies, divestment activism remains a valuable and effective tactic. In fact, continued frustration by Harvard’s administration might be the best possible outcome for divestment’s true aims. Acceptance by the university would offer a fleeting set of headlines and a moral win, but ultimately takes away the power divestment groups have to shape the public debate: their issue.
Changing how endowment investments are managed is a battle, but changing our conversations around climate change is the war. Divesters are winning where it counts.