A Time to Every Purpose

“This place is so hypocritical,” a tutor in Pfoho whispered to me as the credits rolled and the screening ended. “We denounce this stuff and then invest in oil,” he continued. We had been watching “Merchants of Doubt,” a new documentary based on a book of the same name by Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes. The film examines the links between climate deniers and supporters of Big Tobacco, tracing the ideological and monetary ties that bind.

As I sat in Pfoho dining hall that evening, something clicked: I support Divest Harvard.

I have been hesitant to back the movement. Activists have accosted Drew Faust with a camera, and sat in at Massachusetts Hall. These tactics have seemed to cross the line of propriety. If we want to live in a community, we should treat people accordingly, and shoving a recording device in someone's face seems to miss that point.

But my earlier dismissal has wavered upon further thought. In the taped confrontation between Faust and the activists, a group of Harvard University Police Department officers follows her. This is a powerful symbol of one point of tension between the University and Divest: The administration, either through security details or spokesmen, sometimes shields itself from open dialogue. Faust, for instance, only sets aside two or three blocks of time each semester for office hours with University students. To press a conversation with her, Divest activists have little choice other than to catch her in the Yard or occupy Massachusetts Hall.

And that's how it's always been done. When activists in the Student Labor Action Movement wanted the University to pay its workers a fair wage, they took over Massachusetts Hall. Shortly thereafter, the administration agreed to do right by employees. Contrary to the reflexive opposition protest actions arouse from many on campus, they are, in many cases, effective, just, and necessary. No one can hold a conservative administration accountable to save us. And as we have seen, the big-wigs at Harvard Management Corporation and University Hall have much for which to answer.

Many criticize Divest Harvard on the grounds that, in its practices and goals, it only aims for spectacle. But spectacle generates change. Bold demonstrations grab the attention of an apathetic campus. Symbolic moves to remove fossil fuels from the University's portfolio signal that we take climate-change seriously and that forces which obstruct forward movement will face censure.

Others might say that it would be hypocritical for us to divest from fossil fuels because we require them to run the University. But every institution, no matter its resources, exists within systems of power that constrain its freedom to act. To call divestment hypocritical would imply that we have some direct choice in the energy sources available to us. Fossil fuels companies, in fact, use their muscle to stymie the development and adoption of alternative energy.

In the past, and in these pages, I have ridiculed certain forms of activism. More and more, I fear that I have been mistaken, at least in part. Activists sometimes distort the truth. Activists sometimes fail to respect others. Activists sometimes trample values of pluralism. We should call out these errors when we observe them. But without activism, this campus would be more gray and conformist than it already is.

This University engages in questionable economic and social practices abroad, at home, and on campus. Harvard's investments in fossil fuels—and those of other universities, charities, and pension funds—legitimate an order that degrades the environment and imperils our future on this planet. Rather than ask why Divest activists appear so angry, we should ask ourselves why we do not.

Daniel J. Solomon ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House.