University of Chicago alumni want school’s endowment to divest from fossil fuels

More than 100 University of Chicago alumni are demanding the school’s endowment divest itself of fossil-fuel interests and say they will refuse to donate to the university until all fossil-fuel allocations are eliminated.

The alumni movement is spearheaded by UChicago for Climate Action, a group founded in 2023 by UC alumni who want the university to advance a livable future, and parallels an on-campus student-led effort, UChicago Divest, which has collected over 2,500 signatures from the university community.

A letter sent to the university by the alumni notes that UC is behind other leading universities in fossil-fuel divestment. If UC agrees with this alumni call, the university would join a number of leading institutions like Oxford and Cambridge which are working to divest from fossil fuels, the letter points out.

“If the University of Chicago wants to truly be a peer of Ivy League institutions, the board should approve this change and join the majority of Ivys like Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton in working to divest from or substantially reduce investment in fossil fuels,” said Katharine Bierce, one of the co-founders of UChicago for Climate Action.

The group argues the university’s investments in fossil fuel are at odds with its sustainability plan, established in 2022. While universities like Notre Dame, Ball State and Princeton have committed to a net zero campus using solutions like electric heat pumps, thermal storage and geo-exchange technology, the University of Chicago still plans to rely on fossil fuels on campus via gas-fired central steam plant central heating, the group said in a press release.

“While the University was built from John Rockefeller’s oil money, it can choose – like many Rockefeller descendants today – not to use its wealth and prestige to prop up an industry that threatens life on this planet,” said Michael Hendrix, another of the co-founders of UChicago for Climate Action.

“Over a decade ago, my first campus job was calling alumni to fundraise. Many alumni today aren’t comfortable giving money to a university that invests its endowment in fossil-fuel companies.” he said.

In a statement to the Chicago Maroon, the official newspaper of the University of Chicago, the university said divestment was against its policy of abstaining from taking political or social stances, as articulated in its Kalven Report.

“Over more than a century, through a great deal of vigorous debate, the university has developed a consensus against taking social or political stances on issues outside its core mission,” a university spokesperson told the paper. “The university’s longstanding position is that doing this through investments or other means would only diminish the university’s distinctive contribution — providing a home for faculty and students to espouse and challenge the widest range of social practices and beliefs.”

The spokesperson said the UC investment team performs “due diligence to ensure that the funds in which it invests and their managers have no history of illegal behavior and have a strong track record of meeting the professional norms of their business.”

The university also said it would continue its efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

“The university continues to focus on … the goal set in 2020 of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, by procuring renewable energy and implementing energy conservation projects,” the spokesperson told the Maroon.

The alumni demand is the latest development putting pressure on the University of Chicago. A student legal complaint in October of 2023 against the university filed with the Office of the Illinois Attorney General argues that the university’s fossil-fuel investments violate its responsibilities as a nonprofit institution.

Six months prior to the complaint filing, in April of 2023, over 200 people rallied on campus on the main quadrangle to call for divestment. Over 50 professors and 60 local and national organizations have joined the coalition of students to affirm that these investments contribute to the climate crisis and cause harm to UC’s students and community.

Nationally, nearly 100 educational institutions have committed to some form of fossil-fuel divestment, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, Cornell, Syracuse, and the University of Michigan, according to the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitments database.