Harvard divested from fossil fuels in 2021 — but ties to the industry remain strong, especially in research.
Fossil fuel conflicts of interest at Harvard - whether in climate research centers, schools, departments, institutes, or individual administrators and professors - have been well documented by our movement for years. Look through our catalog of reports, case studies, and articles detailing the problem.
The Salata Institute
The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability is a new center for climate research and programming on campus. Its stated goals are admirable: to advance collaboration and accelerate action on the climate crisis, something that's urgently needed in academia and everywhere else. Yet the Salata Institute's beginning has been mired in ties to the fossil fuel industry, a connection that can only hold the Institute back.
The Institute awarded one of its inaugural research grants to Jody Freeman for a research project on corporate net-zero targets. Freeman is an environmental law professor and advisor at Harvard, but at the time of receiving the grant, she was also a board member of ConocoPhillips, where she received $350,000 a year “shaping federal environmental and energy policy” on behalf of the company. In April 2023, news broke that Freeman had used her Harvard email and credentials to lobby the SEC on behalf of the oil company, facilitating meetings between the SEC director and ConocoPhillips insiders. The emails discussed regulations of corporate net-zero targets, the very subject that the Salata Institute had given her a grant to research. Yet, despite such a glaring conflict of interest, Freeman was still allowed to helm the project.
This August, following massive public pressure from FFDH and allies, Freeman announced she would be stepping down from ConocoPhillips. This goes a long way toward repairing her conflicts of interest, but it was still an individual decision, and there is still much doubt about whether the Salata Institute can uphold free, unbiased climate research.
There is one promising thing about the Salata Institute: on its website, the Institute mentions a "funding policy" that would reject partnerships or funding from "any company that does not share the goal of moving our global economy away from fossil fuels." This commitment came after over a year of students organizing for an end to fossil fuel-funded research. However, the commitment names no companies and gives no specific criteria for determining whether a company "shares the Institute's goals." An institute specifically dedicated to stronger action on the climate crisis can do better.
Over $20 million between 2010 and 2020
In March 2023, Data For Progress and Fossil Free Research collaborated to release a report on fossil fuel industry funding of major universities. Their findings: just from publicly available information, Harvard accepted $20,767,825 from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Koch Industries between 2010 and 2020. These are only six major fossil fuel players, and we know there are far, far more donating to Harvard. Plus, the figure of $20 million only counts donations that were publicly disclosed along with a dollar amount. The real amount is likely much higher.
Still, $20 million from players like Exxon, Shell, and others is certainly enough to indicate a problem. Industry funding has been proven to skew research in favor of that industry. The financial conflict of interest compromises academic freedom and integrity - something that's especially important when tackling climate change, an urgent problem that fossil fuel companies have historically tried to bury. Furthermore, fossil fuel companies use their "partnerships" with universities like Harvard to greenwash their reputations while still committing the bulk of their funds to unsustainable expansion.
Data For Progress also conducted polling research on the issue of fossil fuel-funded research. A majority of voters favored prohibiting fossil fuel industry funding of climate research; when voters were made aware that Harvard takes such money, favorability toward the university dropped from 61% to 47%, a loss of 14 points.
Investigating Harvard's climate centers
In November 2021, FFDH released a set of case studies of particular centers, departments, and groups at Harvard that have been heavily infiltrated by fossil fuel interests. The report investigated three principal areas:
- The Harvard Kennedy School. Two centers for research and programming at HKS, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, are home to several explicitly climate- and energy-related research projects sponsored by fossil fuel industry giants. The Harvard Environmental Economics Program, the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Geopolitics of Energy Project, the Environment and Natural Resources Program, the Corporate Responsibility Initiative, and the Harvard Electricity Policy Group are taking money from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, Duke Energy, Enel, Enron, and the National Gas Clearinghouse.
- Harvard Law School. One of the most prominent environmental voices at Harvard is Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law and founding director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. Freeman is also co-chair of the Harvard Presidential Committee on Sustainability, making her a top climate advisor to the President of Harvard. Yet, at the time this report was written, Freeman also held a $350,000-per-year position on the board of directors at ConocoPhillips, one of the world’s largest independent hydrocarbon exploration and production companies, currently notorious for its carbon-bomb "Willow project," a decades-long oil drilling project on previously undisturbed federal land. Freeman has since stepped down from ConocoPhillips following sustained public pressure, but Harvard has no system in place for preventing these conflicts of interest from cropping up again.
- The Harvard Corporation. Several members of the Harvard Corporation, Harvard's highest governing body, have had strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, which may explain why Harvard was reluctant to divest for so many years. Some, like David Rubenstein - co-founder and co-executive chair of the Carlyle Group, which has invested at least $2.5 billion in fossil fuels - have since left the Corporation, but others remain. Two prominent examples are Ted Wells, a lead attorney for ExxonMobil as well as fossil fuel financiers Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Bank of America, and Paul Finnegan, co-founder and co-CEO of a private equity firm invested in oil and gas, coal production, pipelines, and refining.
This report came on the heels of Harvard's commitment to divest from the fossil fuel industry. More than a callout of any particular person, project, or center, these case studies reveal a larger problem: though Harvard has admitted that investment in fossil fuels is imprudent, that the fossil fuel industry is not practical to have as a partner, fossil fuel money and interests still pervade our campus. Divestment was only the beginning of extracting that poison.
The Fossil Free Research Campaign
The Fossil Free Research campaign originated from organizers at Harvard, George Washington University, and Cambridge University, and has since expanded to over a dozen schools in the US, UK, and Canada. Following the widespread success of the divestment movement, Fossil Free Research is investigating these other ties universities have to the fossil fuel industry - and fighting for a more sustainable, climate justice-focused world of higher education.
Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard works closely with Fossil Free Research in calling on Harvard, like other universities, to do better for climate justice. Our coalition is growing stronger every day.
