Letter: The UMass Foundation “Respectfully Denies” Our Right to a Future

By Kevin A. Young and Brendan Post

The following letter appeared previously in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.

Our administrators talk a good game on climate. University of Massachusetts Amherst webpages and fundraising materials often include the term “sustainability” with photos of solar panels. The new UMass strategic plan is titled “For the Common Good.” Unfortunately, the reality doesn’t match the rhetoric. The upper administration has shown contempt for the students and employees who are trying to bring the University’s policies into alignment with the public image.

One example is the UMass Foundation, the body that decides how our $1.31 billion endowment is invested. This shadowy private entity is legally separate from UMass, a clever trick to evade transparency. In practice, the foundation works closely with the “public” side of UMass, including the campus chancellors and the Board of Trustees chair, but it displays even less concern than they for the “common good.”

In 2016, the foundation and trustees capitulated to a student campaign demanding that they divest from stock holdings in oil, gas, and coal companies. They now boast of that decision as proof of their commitment to “socially responsible investing.” However, the foundation still knowingly invests in those sectors indirectly through pooled investment funds. As investigative journalist Dan McGlynn reported for The Shoestring in June, 2024, the foundation continues to use exchange traded funds that invest in fossil fuels as well as weapons, illegal Israeli settlements, and other socially responsible industries devoted to the common good.

UMass also offers up its money – our money – to some of the dirtiest financial institutions in the world. UMass banks with four of the top five biggest funders of fossil fuels (Bank of America, Chase, Citi, and Wells Fargo) and buys coverage from two of the dirtiest insurers, AIG and W.R. Berkley. These companies are bankrolling the polluters that are causing ever-more-intense hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires and bringing us to the edge of a climatic tipping points that will upend human society as we know it. They are the “financial accomplices” of climate destruction, in the words of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. With the foundation and trustees giving polluters our money, we too become accomplices.

In April, 2024, students and workers from the campus group Move Our Money submitted a formal “Request for Review” to the UMass Foundation’s Socially Responsible Investment Advisory Committee (SRIAC), which was established in response to the earlier divestment movement. The request consisted of a 2,000-word research brief citing the latest in climate science as an argument for why the foundation and trustees must cut ties with dirty investment funds, banks, and insurers. It was signed by 20 community members, including elected leaders of student governance bodies and campus unions. The section dealing with banks and insurers included a petition signed by over 1,100 UMass community members and endorsed by the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the faculty-librarian union at UMass. The full request, and our correspondence with SRIAC, are available online.

Three months later, SRIAC returned a response: “Upon review and after careful consideration of the issues contained in your submission, the Committee decided to respectfully deny the Request for Review.” They offered no explanation of how their investment decisions are compatible with “socially responsible investing” or “the common good,” nor did they try to refute any of our facts. As a further slap in the face, their response was not even signed; they delegated all correspondence with the petitioners to their lawyer, who refused to disclose the names of committee members. When we requested an explanation, the lawyer told us, “These deliberations are not subject to transcription nor is the committee required to respond to specific points or ideas raised in the Request for Review.”

The only minor concession that the committee made was an offer to incorporate two of our suggestions for alternative investment funds into the list of options provided to donors. This was a small win for us, though the decision seemed driven by the foundation’s desire to greenwash itself.

This all comes at a critical moment in the climate crisis, growing in urgency with every passing day. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is clear in its messaging; in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate chaos, global emissions must peak by 2025 and be halved by 2030. Yet, the world is far from this goal, even as climate destruction ravages both developing nations and wealthy countries like the United States. The aforementioned climatic tipping points, such as the melting of glaciers and the conversion of the Amazon to savannah, threaten to push us further from a livable future.

Still, there are also some tipping points that can work in our favor. Institutions divesting from fossil fuel companies and their financial accomplices can trigger a chain reaction in the investment world, accelerating the renewable energy transition. The national wave of divestments that followed UMass’s partial divestment in 2016, as well as the major university divestments that put pressure on banks and corporations to withdraw from apartheid South Africa serve as examples. As a large institutional customer and investor, UMass can contribute to that tipping point by living up to its own values.

Imagine a university where students and workers have their concerns taken seriously. One where bold action on climate aligns with the rhetoric of shared governance and sustainability. Divesting from fossil fuels isn’t just a financial choice, it’s a declaration of principles capable of catalyzing real change for the common good.

With Trump’s reelection, the fossil fuel industry tightens its stranglehold over the U.S. federal government. That means that the fight against carbon polluters will need to focus mostly on state and local levels. Institutions of higher education must use all the tools at their disposal to accelerate the shift away from dirty energy.

Kevin A. Young is a faculty member in History at UMass Amherst and a member of Move Our Money.

Brendan Post is an Environmental Science major at UMass Amherst and a student organizer with the campus chapter of the Sunrise Movement as well as Move Our Money.