Bruce's Blog: Should the Western Foundation end investments in fossil fuel companies?
Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard wrote a blog post today addressing the Western Foundation's decision not to divest. In the post, he begins:
The Foundation made their decision earlier today (September 16th, 2014). They will not be divesting. Their statement is available here.
Basically, they decided to “stay in their lane.” The WWU Foundation’s mission is clear: they exist to raise funds from generous donors to support our students with scholarships, to enable that extra margin of excellence for our academic programs, and to support special initiatives defined by the university from time to time. That is their mission, they perform it superbly, and I believe they made the right decision in keeping that as their focus.
I appreciate all the hard work our students and our Foundation put into study, learning, analyzing, and discussing. I also believe the emphasis upon divestment is fundamentally misplaced.
Or, put differently, there are decisions and actions regarding climate change that are of much more enormous importance and it is our university (rather than the Foundation) that must continue to step up to face them.
This I take as given: human-caused global warming is, beyond any doubt, one of the greatest threats facing human (and non-human) kind.
This conclusion is based upon a 42-year career as a professor whose research and teaching focused primarily on environmental matters.
Given, then, the paramount importance of global warming, it further follows that if Western is not doing all we can as a University to address climate change, we will be failing as a publicly-purposed, world-changing university, and not living our defining motto, Active Minds Changing Lives.