We Stormed The Harvard-Yale Game — There Is No ‘Right Time’ To Fight The Climate Crisis

By Carl Denton and Jaden Deal, Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard


The Yale Musical group marched around the field waving flags while 150 of us watched anxiously. Following weeks of planning, groups of Harvard and Yale divestment activists sat scattered while in the stands, waiting for the signal to enter the field. Our minds raced: Was each person ready? How would the police respond? Once we made it onto the field, there could be no going back.


The action, organized by Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard and the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition was among the largest-ever campus protests in support of fossil fuel divestment and cancellation of Puerto Rican debt. About 150 students and alumni from Harvard and Yale stormed the field at halftime of the 136th annual Harvard-Yale football game. Within several minutes, hundreds of supporters had joined the action from the stands, as protesters chanted “out of the stands, onto the field!” The game was delayed by nearly a hour.


In the dialogue of the national movement calling on universities and other institutions to divest their endowments from the fossil fuel industry, this moment marked a key shift. Since 2012, our campaign, Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, has been calling for Harvard to take responsibility for its role in perpetuating global climate injustice and to divest its multi-billion-dollar endowment from the fossil fuel firms creating the crisis.


Taking inspiration from the divestment movements against South African apartheid and the tobacco industry, our movement contends that if institutions wish to combat the climate crisis, they cannot simultaneously profit from the very industries causing that crisis. Harvard spokesperson Rachael Dane told the Harvard Crimson, “While we agree on the urgency of this global challenge, we politely disagree with divestment activists on the means by which a university should confront it.” Nevertheless from where we stand, Harvard’s investments in the fossil fuel industry not only lend financial support to an industry at the very heart of global destruction — they add legitimacy to the endeavors of people who would rather profit personally than maintain the planet for the rest of us.


As students at two of the hugest Ivy League universities in the nation, we occupy positions of privilege like few others in society. It is the least we can do to mobilize that privilege in service of these whose voices are systematically silenced. It’s time for the status quo to change. Harvard, Yale, and institutions like them must take responsibility for the ways their actions impact the world around them.


People watching or participating in this weekend’s act of civil disobedience instructed us that it inspired hope, and also a sense that things might really change. Through it, we offered an avenue for students to be a piece of a collective movement. Civil disobedience is meant to be disruptive, to draw attention, to empower people who might otherwise never imagine themselves to have power. The fight against injustice will not be led by nevertheless more politicians or university administrators. It will be led by masses of people, coming with each other not to request change, although to prepare it.


With each other with our co-organizers at the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition and our neighbors at the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign, we find it unacceptable for powerful institutions like Harvard and Yale to profit in any way from the suffering of the world’s most weak and systematically disenfranchised populations.


The fact that we don’t know exactly how much of the endowment is entangled in these industries is just as distressing. As of May 2019, Harvard disclosed only 1% of its endowment. Any time the University of California system reported its divestment, it revealed that $150 million of its $80-billion marijuana was being redistributed away from such corporations. We believe that transparency shouldn’t come immediately following the fact.


The support we’ve procured from our fellow classmates, faculty, and alumni in the wake of Saturday’s action has opened up a new realm of opportunities. This isn't “just another protest.” We visualize divestment — and, by extension, this weekend’s action — as one of the most immediate and tangible tactics that individuals can use to take action against the climate crisis, and hold the institutions around them accountable.


And we are not acting without a timeline. We demand that Harvard commit to full divestment — that is to mention, completely disclose its holdings in the fossil fuel industry, divest its endowment of these stocks, and reinvest these funds to generate a more just and sustainable future — by Earth Day 2020. This date marks 50 years since the inception of Earth Day, traditional immediately following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill released millions of gallons of crude oil into the ocean. It is also only 10 years from 2030, the date the IPCC assignments because the last chance for global temperature rise to be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius.


The question right now isn't whether divestment is right or wrong: The moral imperative is on our side. Rather, the question is one of political will. It is a question of whether our universities will pick to be on the correct or the incorrect side of history. And because the climate crisis and institutional complicity in it accelerates, the window of time in which any of us can take action to mitigate this suffering is quickly shrinking.


This weekend’s action showed as never before the urgency that this offer holds for students and onlookers everywhere. There really is no “right time” to call out destructive, immoral behavior. In the ever-widening shadow of the climate emergency, there really is only the present.