Harvard's high-profile alumni join fossil fuel divestment campaign in open letter
by The Daily Eye Team February 23 2015, 11:07 am Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 49 secsUniversity faces hearing in a lawsuit that argues Harvard has a duty to fight climate change by dumping fossil fuel companies from $36bn endowment Some of Harvard’s most prominent graduates – from Hollywood star Natalie Portman to environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr and the scholar Cornel West – called on the world’s richest university to dump fossil- fuel companies from its $36bn endowment. In an open letter, released on Friday as the university was being taken to court by its own students, more than 30 former Harvard students signed on to a campus campaign calling on the university to fight climate change by divesting from coal, oil and gas companies. The alumni included Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam war memorial, Nobel laureate Eric Chivian, Pulitzer prize-winning author Susan Faludi, academics, preachers, former US senators and Securities and Exchange commissioners as well as Bill McKibben, the founder of the group 350.org, which has driven the campus divestment campaign.