An Open Letter to Harvard President Drew Faust
October 22, 2025
Dear President Faust,
We are a group of Stanford students fasting today in solidarity with the Divest Harvard Fast this week, and we wish to communicate our reasons for doing so. As your recent letter with President Hennessy detailed, Harvard and Stanford are both leaders in combating climate change through research and education. Yet the letter was conspicuously silent on issues of investment and divestment.
While we believe colleges and universities have a social and ethical obligation to divest from fossil fuels, it is not our intent to prescribe investment policies as outsiders to another university. But we cannot remain silent in response to your administration's failure to seriously engage with advocates for divestment.
Here at Stanford, our university chose to sell its coal investments last spring. To us, this divergence in Harvard and Stanford policy is accompanied by a divergence in administration attitudes. From early in our campaign, we have worked with a university that provided a robust official process for registering concerns about investment and with administrators who discussed those concerns in good faith. Our colleagues in Cambridge, meanwhile, report frustrating private conversations and no public discussions. This is not the response that the urgency and severity of climate change demand.
The dedication of the brave Harvard students, faculty and alumni/ae fasting and fighting for divestment is an inspiration to us all. We sincerely hope their requests are considered and debated as they deserve to be.
Best regards,
Fossil Free Stanford
We are a group of Stanford students fasting today in solidarity with the Divest Harvard Fast this week, and we wish to communicate our reasons for doing so. As your recent letter with President Hennessy detailed, Harvard and Stanford are both leaders in combating climate change through research and education. Yet the letter was conspicuously silent on issues of investment and divestment.
While we believe colleges and universities have a social and ethical obligation to divest from fossil fuels, it is not our intent to prescribe investment policies as outsiders to another university. But we cannot remain silent in response to your administration's failure to seriously engage with advocates for divestment.
Here at Stanford, our university chose to sell its coal investments last spring. To us, this divergence in Harvard and Stanford policy is accompanied by a divergence in administration attitudes. From early in our campaign, we have worked with a university that provided a robust official process for registering concerns about investment and with administrators who discussed those concerns in good faith. Our colleagues in Cambridge, meanwhile, report frustrating private conversations and no public discussions. This is not the response that the urgency and severity of climate change demand.
The dedication of the brave Harvard students, faculty and alumni/ae fasting and fighting for divestment is an inspiration to us all. We sincerely hope their requests are considered and debated as they deserve to be.
Best regards,
Fossil Free Stanford
