T
he University of Michigan had a total enrollment of
48,090 students in fall 2019, but apart from people
flooding Ingalls Mall during Festifall or joining the
crowd walking toward the Big House on game day, there has
seldom been a moment I’ve felt the weight of how huge the
University actually is. People are constantly bustling through
the Diag, earbuds in, laughing with friends or climbing up the
steps to Hatcher. However, I’ve never seen such concentrated
effort and clear community support as on March 15 and Sept.
20 for the Washtenaw County Climate Strikes. University
students and community members alike showed up en
masse to speak out against Ann Arbor’s and the University
of Michigan’s complacency in the climate crisis and the need
for immediate, direct action. While activism and protests on
campus have occurred around me for all five of my semesters,
the climate movement has made itself visible and loud —
despite the University’s unwillingness to listen.
The University has a well-documented history of student
activism that ranges from widespread participation in the civil
rights movement in the 1960s to strong anti-war efforts during
the Vietnam War. Students at the University have historically
invoked their freedom of assembly as a response to social
and political change off campus and to promote institutional
accountability and awareness in Ann Arbor.
Today, students continue this legacy by organizing protests,
teach-ins, social media campaigns and strikes. They do so with
the goal of addressing injustices the University has seen in
recent years — acts of racism on campus, controversial sexual
misconduct policies and the obvious lack of climate action
efforts. While the scope of these movements can vary student
activists have been deliberate in using grassroots organizing
to make their causes accessible while making clear demands
for local action.
Past student activism — particularly the anti-apartheid
movement — reflects the obstacles institutions create for
activists who are fighting to have their needs met. The anti-
apartheid movement was prominent on campus from the mid-
1970s to the late 1980s, and was fueled by nationwide protests
at universities with investments in corporations linked to
apartheid in South Africa. These conversations were part of
great political, economic and ethical discourse, not only in Ann
Arbor, but across the entire U.S. On March 16, 1978, the Daily
published a near-full page spread headlined “How nation
views S. African holdings,” with two separate subsections
titled “Congress frowns on investments” and “Business, unions
join debate …” The piece includes an editor’s note commenting
that this article preceded the University’s Board of Regents
monthly meeting where the board was expected to discuss
what to do — if anything — about University investment in
South African companies.
The piece outlines the arguments for and against divestment
following a report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations’s Subcommittee on African Affairs, where it was
determined “the net effect of American investment has been
to strengthen the economic and military self-sufficiency of
South Africa’s apartheid regime.” This led to three different
recommendations by Congress, which included cutting U.S.
credit to South Africa, denying tax credit to U.S. corporations
paying taxes to the South African government or withholding
the official endorsement of private groups that defend South
African investment. While none of these recommendations
were direct divestment, the subcommittee commented on the
potential need for stronger action, should the recommendations
prove ineffective.
The
prominent
national
conversations
regarding
investments were focused on by students and The Michigan
Daily. As The Daily reported on March 18, 1978, then-editors
requested the Board of Student Publications to “withdraw
the paper’s assets from University investment pool” in protest
of the Regents’ inaction on divestment from South African
companies. The request was denied.
The Daily then reported more in-depth on the board’s
decisions in its March 19, 1978 edition.
It was explained that the board “adopted Regent Thomas
Roach’s resolution, which calls on the University to vote at
shareholders’ meetings in favor of reforming the apartheid
governmental and social structure in South Africa.”
This resolution also called for the University to write to
other corporations to encourage the adoption of the anti-
discriminatory Sullivan principles, which are two corporate
codes of conduct that promote corporate social responsibility.
To contextualize anti-apartheid sentiment on campus, South
African graduate student Leonard Suransky commented to
The Daily for the March 19, 1978 article: “The name University
of Michigan goes before you and echoes around the world. …
Always the term education is linked to morality … we are not
going to change South African policy by politicking with our
stocks.”
The inaction of the board caused a continual push for
change, with activists making their concerns and voices
known and causing significant strife between the board and
the Washtenaw County Coalition Against Apartheid. This led
to mass demonstrations in and outside board meetings, with
events like the March 15-16, 1979 Board of Regents meeting
where WCCAA organized a protest with over 200 students,
demanding a review of South African investment and its
immediate divestment. This prompted the board to issue a
temporary restraining order against WCCAA — and the arrest
of two students. University
President Allan Smith, in a
letter to the public, emphasized
that the Regents’ agreement
to review investments was
strong enough, and the need
for “action now”, which the
students were calling for, was
inappropriate.
Small wins came alongside
more student protests, and
demonstrations
regarding
both
divestment
and
the
administration’s
silencing
of student activism became
routine. On April 19, 1979, the
Regents meeting was protested
by
WCCAA
participants
wearing gags, who had stated
through a press release that
“we are gagged today because;
a) the Regents have used the
courts to stifle the spirit of
the Open Meetings Act; b)
for two years the Board of
Regents have avoided open
discussion of divestment; c)
in South Africa, to call for
divestment is a violation of the
Terrorism Act of 1967, which
is punishable by a minimum
sentence of 5 years and a
maximum sentence of death.”
These
protests
continued
alongside the board’s votes
against divestment, until May
1979, when “the University
divested $227,647 from Black
and Decker Manufacturing
Company.”
With
help
from
the
Michigan legislature — led
by state Rep. Perry Bullard,
D-Ann Arbor — legally-driven
divestment became possible. Student protests continued
to draw attention to the anti-apartheid movement at the
University, and the protests continued well into the late 1980s
as the University fought legal battles against state bills,
particularly Bullard’s House Bill 4553, which was eventually
signed into law on Dec. 31, 1982 and became Public Act 512.
This act forced the divestment of Michigan public colleges and
universities from South African companies, and the University
had until April 1, 1984, to completely divest these stocks.
While the University fought in court against the law,
largely over semantics regarding the “unconstitutional
intrusion upon the powers and the authority of the Regents
to direct expenditures of the University’s funds,” they did
come to the “90% Solution,” which divested the University
from all American corporations that operated in South
Africa, excluding those with significant impact in the state of
Michigan.
In the same way that longstanding, public protests
against apartheid led to campus awareness and support,
environmental activism has been extremely visible following
the mass participation of locals and University students in the
March 15, 2019 Washtenaw County Climate Strike. This strike
was part of the Global Climate Strike and Fridays for Future
movement created by environmentalist Greta Thunberg in
August 2018. The demands of the Washtenaw County Climate
Strike, an initiative put together by a number of Ann Arbor
climate activism groups, including but not limited to the
University’s Climate Action Movement, included a subsection
titled “Stay Committed in Good Faith: Create Ambitious
Climate Goals and Accountable Decision-Making Processes,”
which was echoed by a sit-in staged in the University’s Fleming
Administration Building following the rally.
At this March sit-in, protesters had one demand before
they would agree to leave: President Mark Schlissel commit
to having a minimum one-hour public meeting moderated
by a student of the organizers’ choice. Ten protesters were
then arrested. And despite Schlissel’s letter to the Climate
Action Movement six days later, following the arrests, in
which he agreed to meet this single demand with a public
session that was subsequently planned for and held April 9, the
charges against the climate protesters continued and are still
continuing. Calls for the administration to drop these charges
has become a central push of climate activists, with the
Climate Action Movement circulating a petition that currently
has more than 700 signatures.
The Climate Action Movement is “a coalition of University
stakeholders … that are driving the President, Regents and
Deans to enact sustainability policy and ethics that reflect
the values of the broader U of M community with a focus on
the commitment to, and attainment of, carbon neutrality.”
U.S. News & World Report published a piece headlined “10
Universities With the Biggest Endowments” in which the
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, was ranked eighth with
an $11,733,013,000 end of fiscal year 2018 endowment. The
article defines university endowments as “the value of their
investments based on donated money and financial assets,
which can total billions of dollars,” and contextualizes the
use of these funds across university expenses. A National
Association of College and University Business Officers
study from earlier this year, examining 802 U.S. colleges
and universities, found that an average of 49 percent of
endowment funds are dedicated to student scholarships
and financial aid programs, while others are funelled into
university projects, like the construction of residence halls.
With this understanding of the endowment in mind, the
topic of divestment has been contentious between climate
activists and the University administration, with Schlissel
publicly stating in his April 9 public session that “Essentially,
we don’t divest. It’s not this cause, it’s essentially all causes.
… We get more payout from our endowment here than we get
money from the state of Michigan, so it’s really critical for us
as a robust university. … If we begin the process of narrowing
what the endowment can invest in, based on very valid
arguments and concerns from sincere people, the ability to
invest shrinks, the value of the endowment goes down and
the institution suffers. We’re just not going to divest.”
Despite the endowment’s vast economic complexity and
the administration’s dedication to maintaining a robust and
open business strategy, the Climate Action Movement stands
behind the push to divest the $1.12 billion the University has
invested in natural resources according to the 2018 Report of
Investments. Natural resources
are defined in the report as
“investments
in
companies
located primarily in the U.S. that
produce oil and natural gas, and
companies that service those
industries, as well as non-energy
related investments in minerals,
mining, and wetland restoration.”
Despite
Schlissel’s
statements
concerning the lack of will of the
University to divest regardless of
the cause, members of the Climate
Action Movement have a clear
basis to point back to the historical
precedent of the anti-apartheid
movement. There are reasons for
the economic separation between
the
University
and
ethically
problematic industries.
When discussing the call for
divestment and the response of
the administration, Sasha Bishop,
a member of the Climate Action
Movement and Ph.D. student in
ecology and evolutionary biology,
stated “one of the arguments
that we’ve heard a lot from the
University is that the endowment
is not political, right, but they
have actually in the past taken
the stance that it is, given the
instances where they divested
from apartheid and tobacco.”
Contextualizing the Climate
Action Movement with pushes
against
morally
abhorrent
investment from the past gives
clarity to the extent to which
student activism must go in order
to
receive
credible
attention
from influential institutions like
the University. In the case of
apartheid, it took years of student
protests to prompt the involvement of the state legislature,
which led to the University’s eventual push toward the
blatantly clear and ethical choice of divestment. With the
20/20 vision that historical hindsight gives, the University’s
eventual, 90-percent divestment from South Africa can
be seen as a stand against the wrongdoing of an oppressive
government and something to proudly stand behind —
despite the University’s shameful years-long fight against
moral political activism.
Dim Mang, LSA senior and Climate Action Movement
member, cited two of the Climate Action Movement’s
biggest demands — divestment from fossil fuels and carbon
neutrality by 2030 — and commented on the importance of
care when working with a coalition. She stated that “Working
in coalition with whether it’s undocumented rights or
affordable housing … we are trying to be as supportive as
possible. But our main goals have really been the divestment
from fossil fuel initiatives, and then carbon neutrality.”
Mang then went on to comment on the University’s
response to the activism she’s been involved with on campus.
According to Mang, “They have the same response to all
student activism, which is that they’ll give you just a little bit
so that they can kind of keep you at bay, but they won’t give
you what you actually need to be able to sustain and do the
work you want to do.”
Climate activists have echoed Mang’s frustration over the
University’s cosmetic responses to the activism happening,
with solutions that only work to placate the movement.
This is evident in contradictory actions like Schlissel’s
April 9 public session, despite the University’s choice
to continue prosecuting the climate activists who were
arrested on March 15 to have this meeting. Or the creation
of the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality which is
intended to “(develop) recommendations for how to achieve
carbon neutrality for U-M, as well as develop scalable and
transferable strategies that can be used by other institutions
and larger communities to achieve the same goal.” However,
the University does not allow the commission to discuss
either divestment or the expansion of the Central Power
Plant, an institution that continues and will continue to tie
us to fossil fuels.
As a touted research institution, with an entire school
dedicated to sustainability and the environment, the
University is aware of the dangers of climate change. Climate
change is upon us. It was stated at a U.N. General Assembly
this March that there are only 11 years left to prevent
irreversible damage from climate change. But for many
communities of color, low-income communities, indigenous
communities, members of the LGBTQ community and other
marginalized peoples, the time is already up and the effects
are already real. Climate action must come now, and the
University must listen to the voices of its students and faculty
who refuse to accept complacency. Climate action is ethical
social justice, and it must be prioritized.
The University continues to respond to climate activism
with a mixture of appeasement and suppression, but student
activism must go on and pressure the University to take
the proper stand against the climate crisis. It is laborious
work, but necessary in making student voices heard. Bishop
ended our interview by commenting on the importance
of student activism on the University campus. After citing
the University’s mission statement “to serve the people of
Michigan and the world” she stated “And so in that sense,
from my perspective, at least, (the University is) beholden
to actually listen to students when they are saying that
something is wrong. The University is not actually serving
the people of Michigan, and the people of the world in the
way that it should be. … And when it comes to climate change,
we really are talking about the subject of the entire planet.”
Erin White is a Senior Opinion Editor and can be reached at
ekwhite@umich.edu.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 // The Statement
4B
5B
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 // The Statement
ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN WALSH
Climate Inaction:
Historical activism
and the University’s
irresponsible
response to the
climate movement
Climate Inaction:
Historical activism
and the University’s
irresponsible
response to the
climate movement