Cornell students are gearing up for their latest push to make the university divest its endowment from fossil fuel investments.
With the recent fall in gas prices, energy stocks have been hit hard. But don’t expect the environmental justice students of DivestNOW! Cornell to even cite this fact. Instead, their latest pat-themselves-on-the-back campaign features students writing slogans, non-sequiturs, and the like on on whiteboards and posting pictures of them on Buzzfeed: “Cornellians Give 21 Empowering Reasons to Support Fossil Fuel Divestment.”
Funny how the there is neither reference to science nor finance—the two subjects (ostensibly) under consideration when it comes to fossil fuel divestment—in any of the 21 “empowering” reasons to dump fossil fuel investments from Cornell’s $6.2 billion endowment. (No, merely using the word “capital” does not count as making a financial argument.)
Also, how are any of these reasons “empowering?” That word has elevated to sacred status in the liberal-progressive lexicon. All leftist movements and actions must be “empowering.” What is empowering about scribbling some witless phrase on a whiteboard?
Finally, consider that fifty percent of Cornell students receive some sort of financial aid. Let us ponder which of these 21 students are receiving financial aid from the university, most of which is provided by the endowment. The returns courtesy of fossil fuel investments are paying for many students’ educations.
I wonder what the members of DivestNOW! Cornell would say to that? Perhaps The Cornell Review will soon find out.
