To Divest or Not to Divest from Fossil Fuels: An Interview with Emily of DivestVU

On Feb. 23, 2021, DivestVU and Dores Divest organized a protest to urge Vanderbilt University to divest from fossil fuels. DivestVU and Dores Divest are student-run groups at Vanderbilt, where the former is a member of the Fossil Free SEC, a coalition of twelve organizations at universities in the Southeastern Conference advocating for divestment. Divestment movements have seen success at several other universities including Brown, Columbia, Georgetown, and Yale. 

To learn more about DivestVU’s work and its connection to environmental justice, we spoke to Emily Irigoyen, an Environmental Sociology and Spanish major at Vanderbilt and a Co-Founder of DivestVU. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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What does DivestVU aim to accomplish? 

DivestVU is a student coalition that is urging Vanderbilt University to shift its financial holdings away from fossil fuel companies, specifically the top 100 carbon-emitting companies, in the name of combating the climate crisis. We view this as an ethical and moral duty, and we are also working to strengthen the financial justification for divestment. 

Is DivestVU modeled off of organizations at other universities? Do you collaborate with any other organizations and/or universities? 

Divestment movements have been happening for decades, so we come from a long line of divestment activists. DivestVU takes inspiration from a number of the campaigns that have come before it, including the movements against apartheid and the tobacco industry in the 1980’s and 1990’s, respectively, and the first movement to divest from fossil fuels at Swarthmore College in 2010. Divestment is a tactic that has been employed by many social advocacy groups, but DivestVU is the first campaign to gain significant traction at Vanderbilt. There was a similar push for divestment in 2013, but it died out. That’s the problem with many divestment movements – they tend to be short-lived. 

Last year, Cornell University staged a mock wedding, where students “married” the university to fossil fuels to emphasize that its connection to the fossil fuel industry ran deeper than was appropriate.  While DivestVU has elected to take a more bureaucratic approach, the mock wedding brought attention to the divestment movement and increased student engagement with the issue, which is what DivestVU aims to do with its programming as well. Overall, our goal is to build relationships with allies within the Vanderbilt community and increase the visibility of the movement to those outside of the university. 

DivestVU has wide-ranging connections, not only to other universities in the United States, but also to high schools and universities across the globe. We also work with a variety of advocacy and multicultural groups on campus, some of which include Hidden ‘Dores, the Indigenous Scholars Organization (ISO), Vanderbilt’s Lambda Association, Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Responsibility (SPEAR), and Sunrise. All of the organizations that DivestVU collaborates with exist within a similar social activism space. We’re all working towards a similar goal, which apart from divestment, is wanting to be heard and engaged with. 

What did the protest staged by DivestVU and Dores Divest on February 23, 2021 aim to accomplish? 

The primary reason we wanted to hold a protest, at Kirkland Hall (Vanderbilt’s administrative building) in particular, is because representatives from DivestVU have been unable to get in touch with the Vanderbilt administration or speak to anyone with information about the endowment. We would like for our petition to be passed by the Vanderbilt Faculty Senate, as it has been by the Student Senate and the Graduate Student Council. The Faculty Senate would like to hear both sides of the argument – why Vanderbilt should divest versus why Vanderbilt should not divest – but because we have been unable to get a response from the administration, there isn’t even a discussion to be had. We anticipated that this process would be difficult, but we did not anticipate an unwillingness to engage with us at all. 

What do you think is the advantage of viewing climate change through an intersectional lens? 

People tend to forget that striving for climate justice can be very elitist, at least in the way it is approached by many mainstream organizations. That’s why we’re trying to make this movement as inclusive as possible. When we’re talking about environmental justice, we’re also talking about racial justice and about ensuring that employees are paid proper wages and not displaced in the name of renewable energy. When we’re talking about a green transition, we’re talking about a just green transition that isn’t going to displace lower income and/or minority communities for the sake of the environment. 

We recently met with the Vanderbilt Workers’ Union, and I was surprised to find out how little they knew about Vanderbilt’s goal to power the entirety of their campus with renewable energy by 2050. Based on our conversations with them, DivestVU has revamped their petition to include the development of a contingency plan for the workers who would be displaced by a shift to 100% renewable energy. It’s great that Vanderbilt is working towards this transition, but it is also important to consider and account for the potential repercussions. 

How do climate change and fossil fuels impact communities of color, in particular? How does DivestVU work to amplify the voices of those in these communities? 

Climate change is a slow violence, so we do not see its effects all at once, like we do with a hurricane or a tornado. Those who do not have the money or social power to fight it are forced to live with the consequences of climate change. We saw this in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and we continue to see it in Miami, Florida today. Hialeah City and Overtown are two of the most impoverished communities in Miami, so they lack the infrastructure that wealthier regions of Miami have in place to manage flooding. 

This phenomenon is observed on a global scale as well. For instance, the Syrian refugee crisis was exacerbated by drought, and a similar crisis could occur in the future. Coastal regions in Asia, such as Bangladesh, will be forced to grapple with not only excessive flooding, but also the subsequent impact of this flooding on their agricultural seasons. This will make it difficult for these communities to remain self-sufficient, potentially spurring another refugee crisis. The United States and some European countries may claim that these crises are not their concern and/or that it is not their responsibility to take in these refugees, but these countries are some of the most significant sources of carbon emissions, and therefore, contributors to climate change. 

Climate change is a multifaceted issue, so it is critical that the minority and lower-income groups who are directly affected by the climate crisis are included in the conversation. There are a number of faculty and students at Vanderbilt who have been directly impacted by climate change, and DivestVU works to amplify their voices at our events. At one event, members of the ISO discussed the ways in which climate change has made indigenous peoples’ way of life unsustainable. At the town hall, a faculty member spoke about the wildfires in California and environmental justice. He shared how being a person of color often puts you in a worse position to deal with climate change because you are at a greater risk of developing certain health conditions. 

What can the Vanderbilt administration and student body be doing on both a short term and long term basis to mitigate the climate crisis? 

Short term, there needs to be an ad hoc committee providing input on ethical investments concerning not only fossil fuels, but also land ownership (e.g. the Dakota Access Pipeline), private prisons, etc. It is important for students to know what their tuition dollars are going towards, especially because money is a powerful political tool. As such, the decision to invest in or divest from a given company becomes more than just a financial decision – it is a matter of who we are and what we want to represent as a student body. 

Long term, there needs to be better communication between the Vanderbilt administration and student body. This could involve the creation of a position that serves as a liaison between the administration and student activists. 

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We are a ways away from achieving climate justice, but organizations like DivestVU and Dores Divest are taking steps in the right direction. “Divesting in fossil fuels is a symbolic way of showing the fossil fuel industry that their business model is no longer marketable for this generation”, says Emily. 

Check out DivestVU (@divestvu) and Dores Divest (@dores_divest_) on Instagram!