Divest Princeton is a coalition of students, faculty, staff and alumni calling on Princeton University to FULLY and urgently divest our endowment from fossil fuel companies and reinvest responsibly. Divest Princeton calls for FULL dissociation from fossil fuel companies to achieve fossil free research and an end to recruitment on campus by fossil fuel companies.
In March, 2022, Princeton had $1.7 billion of fossil fuel holdings which was 4.5% of the endowment. Over the last 5 years, approximately 50 fossil-fuel related companies have recruited on campus and the University has received $26.2 million in funding research from eleven oil and gas companies, with most of that coming from Exxon-Mobil and BP.
In September, 2022 Princeton announced it would divest its publicly traded fossil fuel investments, leaving $700 million of private fossil fuel investments untouched. The university also said it would dissociate from financial relationships with 90 coal and tar sands companies, a small fraction of the fossil fuel companies currently in operation.
Divest Princeton began in October 2019 when a group of students and alumni wrote an Open Letter to President Eisgruber. Now, over 3100 Princetonians have signed, pledging to withhold donations to Princeton until the university fully divests (add your name here). We submitted our formal proposal for divestment to the University on February 13, 2020. On April 19th, 2022 160 Princeton faculty and staff delivered a petition calling for immediate full divestment from fossil fuels.
We are not the first group to urge Princeton to divest from fossil fuels. See a timeline of past and ongoing fossil fuel divestment action at Princeton and our progress here.
In the face of the overwhelming nature of the climate crisis, I look for levers of power and change to which I have access. Princeton is a powerful lever; I have thrown my weight as an alumna, and gathered the weight of other alumni, to push the University to act 'in the service of humanity' and hasten our transition away from fossil fuels, through every means available--including divestment.
- Anna Liebowitz '09
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