Last February, four student activists at Manhattan’s New York University got the meeting they’d been waiting for: a chance to tell the school’s board of trustees why the university should divest the fossil fuel stocks in its US$5-billion endowment. Their chances were slim: NYU had resisted divestment for two decades and refused even to disclose what investments they owned. The leaders of Sunrise NYU left nothing to chance: they printed their arguments on spiral-bound documents, one student ordered a new outfit for the occasion, and another bought his first tie.
The student leaders waited months for a response. Finally, the news came in August via a letter from board chair William Berkley, a 77-year-old insurance billionaire. NYU, he said, has no direct ownership of companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction and “commits to avoid any direct investments” in such companies in the future. He even applauded Sunrise NYU, citing their research and communication skills and “their essential set of environmental sustainability values.”
It was a big win. Sure, Harvard and Princeton both agreed to divest fossil stocks last year, but NYU, located just blocks from Wall Street, was different.
Back in 2016, Berkley called divestment “ingenuous” and argued that many fossil fuel companies were investing in green energies. But as Sunrise NYU cofounder Dylan Wahbe told The Guardian in September, with oil companies currently expanding production and cutting back on renewables, “it would be hard to make those arguments today.”
NYU’s about-face should hearten climate activists everywhere. As the climate emergency grows, even recalcitrant institutions feel the ground shifting. Focused, imaginative and relentless action can achieve unexpected victories.
Sunrise NYC is one of 100 chapters of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented political action organization founded in 2017. Sunrise made headlines in 2018 by occupying the Washington office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, proving that no politician is safe from their scorn. Wahbe was impressed by that action, so he was quick to join when film student Alicia Colomer started the NYU chapter in 2020.
The national Sunrise organization achieved another win in September, when President Joe Biden launched the American Climate Corps, a paid training and service program that will put 20,000 Americans to work on energy and environmental projects. Inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, Sunrise has lobbied for such a program for three years.
At NYU, the student activists identified their biggest problem as the board itself. So they’ve called out conflicted trustees such as vice-chair Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor in fossil fuel firms. Other targets include Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News host who is a proponent of the fossil fuel industry, and Berkley, whose company insures oil and gas firms. In addition, the students say, several trustees represent oil interests in the Middle East, and recently retired trustee John Paulson was an advisor to the Trump administration.
As the new school year dawned, Sunrise NYU was back at it, attending Climate Week NYC protests, cleaning up beaches, lobbying to “democratize” the board of trustees, and trying to push fossil fuel money out of university research.
They’re in good company. In Canada, students at University of Waterloo, McGill and Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), among others, continue to pressure their schools to divest. They joined thousands of young people who rallied against fossil fuel in cities across the U.S. and Canada in September.
“There are already 12 universities in Canada that are already divesting or having plans to divest,” said one MUN protestor. “But right now, MUN has no plan in place to divest, and that is just not acceptable for us.”
