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(10/08/20 9:59am)
Last week, we worked with students from all over campus to stage a protest against the Alexander Hamilton Forum’s debate, “1619 or 1776: Was America Founded on Slavery?” We protested the event because we find the mission, funding and history of the AHF — as well as the topic and title of the event — purposefully inflammatory, harmful to our BIPOC peers and a continuation of the institutional and systemic racism that Middlebury upholds. This is not the opinion of just a few students. At the time of publishing this op-ed, our open letter addressed to the Senior Leadership Group received 649 student and 110 alumni signatures. Since none of us were called on during the question and answer section of the debate, we still have a few unanswered questions:
A major financial contributor to the AHF is the Jack Miller Center, which was originally a part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). The ISI's stated mission is to promote limited government, individual liberty, the free market economy and traditional values. The ISI also receives $8 million in funding from the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and, while the Jack Miller Center became independent in 2007, it’s safe to say they are both very much part of the network of right-wing think tanks. The ISI is also an associate member of the State Policy Network, which is funded by the Koch Brothers and coordinates and supplies resources for its members to help promote a conservative policy agenda. How can we expect to have open and honest conversations about race when the organizations sponsoring them are so thoroughly implicated in the systems that perpetuate institutional racism?
Given that Professor Keegan Callanan, the director of the AHF, is a council member on the National Endowment for the Humanities — a committee that is part of the Trump Administration’s push for “pro-America” "patriotic" curricula through the 1776 Commission — doesn’t Callanan’s simultaneous involvement in this debate and the 1776 Commission present a conflict of interest?
Middlebury has a well-documented history of inflammatory speakers, many of which have been met with fierce resistance from the student body. But this summer, Middlebury publicly committed to anti-racism. Is hosting a debate that questions the very role that slavery played in this country’s founding anti-racist? Will the college ever pay more than just lip service to its BIPOC community members, or will it continue to ride its liberal reputation as it repeatedly prioritizes “freedom of speech” over the safety of our BIPOC students?
Not only did our questions go unanswered, but our ability to protest was swiftly taken away from us. Out of respect for Leslie Harris and our decision to abide by the Policy on Open Expression, our protest plan was intentionally non-disruptive. Access to chat and audio was disabled from the start of the event, and every person who used their video had it shut off in a matter of seconds. Most notably, however, students were kicked off the Zoom call and permanently banned from the forum for various attempts at non-disruptive protest. Although digital protests are a new world for all of us, the AHF would have had no grounds for removing us from the room had this event been held in person and had we attended with the same intention to protest non-disruptively. How, then, is it acceptable that we were removed from this digital event? This blatant display of censorship — coming from a group of academics who pride themselves on being crusaders for free speech — was unacceptable and entirely antithetical to Middlebury’s purported values of open expression and “the right to assemble peacefully to evince dissent and to call on others to take action,” as stated in the Policy on Open Expression.
Furthermore, this is certainly not the first time that the AHF — with the influence of right-wing money and conservative agendas — has intentionally attempted to sow divisions in the Middlebury community. We see you, AHF, and we refuse to stand by as you platform white supremacist dialogue and harm members of our community in the process. We urge you to consider the dissonance between what you claim to stand for and your actions at last Thursday’s event — after all, your claims to free speech mean nothing if you deny others the right to dissent.
If we are to move forward on envisioning an inclusive community where our BIPOC students feel that they belong, then the student body and the administration need to critically reflect on the true intentions of the AHF and how their unchecked power to silence student voices contributes to a harmful campus culture. We echo the concerns of other BIPOC student advocacy groups and the demands listed by Kaila Thomas and Rodney Adams in their recent op-ed. We look forward to future conversations between students, professors and administrators that address the deep-seated racism on this campus, including the role that the AHF plays in perpetuating it. For now, we encourage students to bring your concerns to the Open Meeting on Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion today at 7 p.m. on Zoom. We’ll see you there.
Claire Contreras ’22.5 and Divya Gudur ’21 are Co-Managers of Sunday Night Environmental Group. Madison Holland ’21 is Co-Director of the SGA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
(04/09/20 9:59am)
Two weeks ago, Middlebury College joined thousands of other schools when it was forced to shut down on-campus operations due to the novel coronavirus. Suddenly, what seemed like an overseas crisis became our reality. Many of us were left without a safe home to return to as we packed up our lives indefinitely. Scrambling to say our goodbyes, we were gravely aware of our time lost at Middlebury and the difficult months ahead. Taking shelter across the country, we have helplessly watched this crisis disrupt our world while taking thousands of lives.
As we are writing this, the United States has the highest prevalence of Covid-19 in the world with 431,838 confirmed cases (likely a drastic underestimate due to a shortage of testing kits, healthcare disparities and asymptomatic carriers). We have seen mass layoffs disproportionately affecting low-wage workers, small businesses and at least 27.5 million uninsured Americans; nearly 40% of New Yorkers of New Yorkers are unable to pay rent and almost 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance. Government officials across the country have scrambled to take action. Seattle has enacted a rent moratorium, New York state temporarily waived foreclosures and Congress has approved a two trillion dollar economic stimulus package.
While this unprecedented resource mobilization to fight the coronavirus is certainly warranted, it is shocking compared to our inaction tackling the climate crisis. The economic restructuring and dramatic lifestyle changes we have seen in the past weeks prove the kind of large-scale action needed to address climate change has been possible this whole time. We were in a global crisis even before this pandemic. In the past year we witnessed large parts of California, the Amazon and Australia burn, and floods devastated the central United States, Brazil and Ecuador. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached 415 parts per million, far above scientifically accepted safe levels needed to maintain a livable planet. Globally, black, brown and low-income people are disproportionately impacted by toxic drinking water, industrial waste, and other forms of environmental degradation. And climate change promises a future of more pandemics, more fires, more floods and more frequent and devastating events of every kind. These crises will shut down our country (and the world) time and time again, just like Covid-19 has. Without a concerted effort, the fear, sadness and destabilization we are currently experiencing as a result of Covid-19 will define life for generations to come.
But we also cannot ignore that coronavirus is part of climate change; both are symptoms of the same capitalist system that values profit over lives. The U.S. government's response to the mounting economic crisis is to bail out airline companies and fossil fuel corporations instead of reaching out to those most vulnerable — especially undocumented and migrant workers whose needs and essential contributions are consistently overlooked. Whether it be our overwhelmed healthcare sector or the lack of supportive infrastructure for at-risk populations, this crisis has and continues to reveal the cruel inadequacies of our social and economic structures.
Right now, we have the opportunity to radically rebuild our country. And many are already trying: workers at Amazon and Instacart, for instance, are striking to demand just labor standards. General Electric employees are protesting to shift production to medical equipment. Tenants struggling to pay rent are threatening rent strikes. Politicians like Stacy Abrams are advocating for bailing out people who have been hit the hardest by the crisis, rather than large corporations. College students all around the world are building mutual aid networks to help classmates and community members facing sudden displacement. All around us, people are beginning to imagine and enact a world in which they want to live. And so as Covid-19 continues to take and change lives we have a choice: do we allow governments and corporations to profit off of the increased vulnerability of people and devastate our planet, or do we learn from this crisis and replace the broken systems that got us here? Please, choose consciously.
Sophie Chalfin-Jacobs ’22, Claire Contreras ’22.5, Divya Gudur ’21, Jaden Hill ’22, Hannah Laga Abram ’23, and Asa Skinder ’22.5 are all members of Middlebury Sunday Night Environmental Group.
(01/17/19 10:59am)
In recent months, we have become aware of concerns that divestment might present a risk to financial aid. Divest Middlebury would like to state publicly that the accessibility of our institution is a top priority for our group. We are a climate justice organization that stands for racial, gender and economic equity. Financial aid is a priority of our group as a whole and also of personal importance to many of our organizers. In writing this op-ed we also hope to stress the economic benefits of divestment and reaffirm our commitment to our fellow students. Arguments that pit financial aid and environmental justice against each other are unfair and inaccurate. These arguments ultimately put the burden for climate inaction on Middlebury College’s most vulnerable students.
There is ample evidence that divestment from fossil fuels is a financially savvy decision. In the official referendum ratified by the student body, SGA and the faculty, Divest Middlebury asked the Board to pledge to divest all holdings in the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel corporations over a five-year time period. This extended timeline would allow the college’s investment managers to divest holdings in a controlled way, ensure low financial risk, and reinvest in more profitable and sustainable industries.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]There is no evidence that divested financial institutions experience increased losses.[/pullquote]
In 2010, MSCI, a prominent provider of stock market indices and analysis, created two investment indices of the largest 9,500 corporations, one that included fossil fuel investments and another that did not. Over the next five years, the fossil-free portfolio averaged an annual return .97 percent higher than the index including fossil fuel corporations. If $1 billion had been invested in the fossil free index in 2010, it would now be worth $2.24 billion, whereas its counterpart would be worth $2.13 billion. In 2017, fossil fuels were also the second worst performing sector in the S&P 500 stock market index, losing four percent compared to market gains of 19 percent. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a fortune that made its money in the fossil fuel industry, recently published a report stating that the Fund’s success has shown that fossil fuel divestment “can be done without causing harm to the overall performance of your investment portfolio.” These sentiments are shared by the nearly 1,000 other institutions that have pledged to divest. A recent analysis by investment strategist Jeremy Grantham found that there was no evidence that divested financial institutions experience increased losses. Similarly, another study demonstrates the potential financial penalties for not divesting, suggesting that New York State pension funds have lost $22 billion by staying invested in fossil fuels.
Stranded assets theory confirms the financial risk of not divesting: continued investment only exposes portfolios to risk, since marketed valuation of fossil fuel corporations is contingent upon the burning of 942 gigatons of carbon reserves. Fossil fuel corporations cannot approach their market valuation without ignoring the Paris Climate Agreement, which restricts future carbon emissions to 800 gigatons. Failure to divest puts our endowment at unnecessary risk of the carbon bubble caused by stranded assets. Furthermore, when other institutions of higher education have divested, donations have significantly increased. For all of these reasons, we believe that divestment is the fiscally responsible action.
Even in the unlikely case that Middlebury loses returns due to divestment, losses should not impact financial aid. Investments in the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies make up 0.6 percent of Middlebury’s endowment, with 5 percent of the endowment having exposure in the entire fossil fuel industry. Currently, 25 percent of Middlebury’s endowment goes toward financial aid. In the case of any loss due to discontinued exposure to the fossil fuel industry, risk would be spread evenly across the endowment. It is unlikely that fossil fuels outperform the rest of the market and all alternative investments, yet even if fossil fuels outperformed the other 95 percent of investments by 10 BP points (.1 percent), the impact of not being invested in the fossil fuels industry would be $55,000 from our total endowment. This would result in a total loss of $13,750 from financial aid, a minimal loss in comparison to millions our school commits to financial aid each year. In the past, Middlebury has not cut its institutional commitment to funding financial aid in years of poor endowment performance. For this reason, individuals who argue that financial aid should be the first thing to be cut reveal much more about their own priorities than the priorities of the college or the divest movement.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Divestment represents an important action that Middlebury can take to condemn climate change, support the college mission statement, and protect students’ futures.[/pullquote]
It is unfair and insulting to use students on financial aid as an excuse for inaction and the perpetuation of injustice. Divestment represents an important action that Middlebury can take to condemn climate change, support the college mission statement, and protect students’ futures. We would like to point out that students of more vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds are statistically more likely than wealthier classmates to experience negative impacts from fossil fuel infrastructure and environmental injustice. We are here to learn the skills necessary to protect our families and home communities from climate change. Falsely using our education as an argument to continue investment in the same industry that is hurting us is both cruel and flawed.
In the end, discourse that frames divestment as being at odds with financial aid is fearmongering. We know that divestment and financial aid can go hand in hand and we are thrilled to stand for both. We regret that our fellow classmates may have felt nervous about the financial impacts of divestment and will happily participate in further conversation about concerns regarding this issue. As always, our movement is open to everyone, especially those most marginalized by the climate crisis. We will not allow our educations to be used as a rhetorical device with which to jeopardize our futures as we move towards climate justice together.