THE CORNELL DAILY SUN | Tuesday, Feburary 5, 2013 7
OPINION
You Only Divest Once L
ast week’s excellent dialogue in these pages on the question of Cornell divesting from fossil fuels has motivated me to jump on the bandwagon. Cornell and its peer institutions are indeed well-positioned to affect the tenor of the climate debate. Initially, an “obvious” move in my mind, divestment now appears to be a potent tool that advocates should use carefully. I want to emphasize that the concerns I am about to highlight are not cases against divestment activism. Rather, they are calls to accompany it with a wariness that comes from acknowledging historical lessons of socially responsible divestment and investment. Calls to divest from polluting industries or brutal regimes fall into two broad categories. The first are those that appeal to a purely normative, ethical standard that says we cannot support the injustices we might be facilitating. The second variety are those that also try to usher in a new economy or regime. The first sort admittedly has a lower burden, a simple appeal to Cornell’s Trustees to pull Cornell money out of oil, coal and gas firms would fall into this category. The advocates of such a move, however, still need to engage in a thorough and honest assessment of the counterfactual. It would not do, for instance, if Cornell divesting from listed American fossil fuel entities increases reliance on foreign drilling fields where weaker regulatory capacities lead to even more environmental damage. The second brand of divestment is more interesting to examine because it also attempts to bring positive reform. The United States’ universities have been part of such an attempt before when a divestment campaign was launched against the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The degree of involvement was by no
means uniform. U.C. Berkeley pulled out investments worth more than $3 billion and earned a specific commendation from Nelson Mandela. According to an old report from The Harvard Crimson, Harvard needed a specific appeal by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to get on the right side of history before it began divesting. The case of Columbia is particularly instructive for climate activists today. Columbia’s divestment from South Africa was only one part, albeit a crucial one, of a deeper movement that involved a year of sit-ins, teach-ins and peaceful demonstrations, often outside Board of Trustees meetings. Cornell students and faculty also held protests in favor of divesting from South Africa. However, the University’s response was less enthusiastic. If the fossil fuel divestment movement is to strive for something beyond the healthy consciences of its advocates, it has to look to Columbia in the 80’s as an example. A simultaneous emphasis on broader environmental literacy and consciousness is not just desirable; it is necessary. Disinvestment can be a powerful tool, but it is a single-use device. A 1999 study by Ivo Welch and Paul Wazzan argued that even in the South African case, where the disinvestment consensus was far stronger, there was barely any direct financial pressure on firms doing business with the regime. Selling sprees by large entities temporarily depressed stock prices but “socially indifferent” investors soon stepped in to take advantage of the undervalued assets. Critically, for the broader cause, there was little you could do once you had divested because you lost all future leverage by doing so. Divestment provided a one-shot opportunity to attract media and public attention to the cause and to boost morale among supporters. In the South African
case, the publicity served the campaign well. Had the opportunity been wasted, even Berkeley’s massive withdrawal would have only provided a gigantic buying opportunity for investors unconcerned about the Apartheid regime. Key differences between the fossil fuel and anti-Apartheid divestment movements make the former admittedly harder to popularize. The difference is not one of the
divestment. A set of principles demanding equal treatment of employees irrespective of race, called the Sullivan Principles, became prominent in the rhetoric of antiApartheid activists in Washington. The Principles had been crafted by the Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan, a board member at General Motors. GM was also, by many accounts, the largest employer of blacks in South Africa. Once Sullivan had succeeded in
Kirat Singh Evaluating the Discontents prevalence of financial self-interest — the same debates over the true goals of University endowments and pension funds that problematize fossil fuel divestment today occurred in the 1980s as well. The first important difference is the theater of action. Although small American investors in the involved firms were affected to some degree by anti-Apartheid divestment, the impact of fossil fuel divestment on American citizens is likely to be more direct and pronounced. The increasing economic importance of domestic energy production from shale-gas exploitation only exacerbates opposition to the movement. Second, in the South African case, American divestment aimed to export a legislatively-mandated right — racial equality — to South Africa rather than promote a new value domestically. This, I would argue, produced constructive incentives for American corporate actors to back
enforcing the principles within GM, it had a ripple effect among other American firms that risked being labeled discriminatory and complicit with the United States if they abstained from adopting the Sullivan Principles in their South African operations. These barriers help explain the headwinds being faced by divestment advocates today. Despite the scientific consensus, many minds are yet to be convinced that the short-term financial tradeoff is worth making. To do that, it is essential that divestment be only one in a bouquet of many moves pursued by climate activists at Cornell and beyond.
Kirat Singh is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at ksingh@cornellsun.com. Evaluating the Discontents appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.
Reimaging the Student Organization L
ast week, I joined a team of more than 2,000 Cornell students clambering through the obstacle course that is the Student Assembly Finance Commission. Together we jumped through the hoops of budget forms, scratched our names across boxes for new officers and scrambled to upload supporting documents. By the end of the process, I was drained and exhausted from grappling with this bureaucracy. I had expected a simple process of confirming that we were dedicated Cornell students. Yet applying for SAFC funding was not the objective process I expected it to be. Each step of reg-
out the forms for the SAFC, we soon learned that this is not what they believe Cornell organizations should look like. First, there was the issue of officers. All groups must have a president, treasurer, and two other officers. From this first step of registration, hierarchy is mandated. Continuing along the registration process, every organization has to submit a constitution as well as bylaws. It would be fine if this was a self-determined document created by each group, but the SAFC has very specific requirements here as well. They specify what each article of the constitution should contain, giving guidelines for everything from voting process to meeting structure. Essentially, the conand bylaws Personal Politics stitution are pre-written without room for variant organizing practices. As a group that strives to be anti-oppressive, the nonhierarchical and consensus-based structures of our organization represent our core values. I understand the importance of the SAFC in commissioning finances to student organizations responsibly, but it has stepped far beyond this role. The SAFC has become an instructive model for how student groups should organize their process and express their core values. For many of us on campus, our organizations are an escape from institutions in which we feel powerless. We create these communities to celebrate our common interests. In these spaces, we have the power to explore what is possible when passionate members come together. Yet the requirements of the SAFC constrict this exploration and
Tyler Lurie-Spicer
istering my student organization for the process felt more instructive than inquisitive. Clearly, the SAFC has an idea for how every student group should be organized and our funding will be held ransom until we submit to this conformity. Yet for many of us, student groups are spaces where we can explore alternative ways of organizing. Last semester, before we reached out to the SAFC, my group tried a hierarchical leadership structure. However, we found that this made members feel ostracized from the group and they subsequently stopped coming to meetings. This semester, our goal was to try a different structure — one that would be horizontal with every decision being made by consensus when possible. But as we filled
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limit the possibilities of what our student organizations can become. This pre-professional culture of hierarchal organization has become a national sentiment. In his inaugural address last Tuesday, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCroy (R) explained his plan for the public university system in North Carolina. His staff is drafting legislation “in which we change the basic formula and how education money is given out to our universities and our community colleges, not based on how many butts [are] in seats, but how many of those butts can get jobs.” Nationally, we are sacrificing the kinds of organizational thinking that has supported the love of learning in favor of training the next generation of corporate America. Whether it’s a university in North Carolina or a student organization in Ithaca, N.Y., it is clear that administrations are cracking down on students’ attempts to explore alternatives to the structures that supports dominant employable practices, rather than community-based organization that thrive on the empowerment of the individuals involved. These disempowering organizational models clearly prioritize product over production. Their Machiavellian nature is great for reaching end goals. Yet when an organization is rooted in a community and works toward supporting the desires and sentiments of those members, its daily operations and structure must grant each participant the strength and opportunity to be a leader. I wish my organization did not have to learn this lesson the hard way. Yet, if the SAFC does not change its registration procedures, I fear that many future Cornell organizations may unnecessarily find themselves in the same position. Tyler-Lurie Spicer is a sophomore in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He may be reached at til4@cornell.edu. Personal Politics appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.
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