Since making a commitment to divest from fossil fuels in March, Syracuse University administrators have been working closely with the university’s investment managers to make plans on how to move forward.

When SU made the decision to divest, it committed to no longer having its endowment funds directly invested in coal mining and fossil fuel companies. Prior to the commitment, the university did not have any direct investments in such companies.

Now, SU and its investment managers are assessing the current landscape of potential investments in companies focused on renewable energy as part of its future plans for divestment, said Kevin Quinn, senior vice president of public affairs, in an email.

The Board of Trustees’ Investment and Endowment Committee conducts regular audits of its investment portfolio to ensure that SU’s investments meet the requirements for socially responsible investing, Quinn said.

Quinn added that these decisions are supported by Institutional Shareholder Services, an organization that provides investment decision-making tools to the university.

Jonathan Schmidt, a member of Divest SU and a sophomore geography and political science dual major, said Divest SU has met a few more times with administrators like Quinn and Bea González, dean of University College, since the announcement last spring.

The biggest meeting, Schmidt said, was the one in September, when they met with Board of Trustees members to discuss what the administration has been doing so far.

Schmidt said a lot of the work to remove the remaining fossil fuel investments has been out of the hands of Divest SU and up to the university administrators and their financial advisers.

Members of the Board of Trustees have said that SU’s divestment decision has had a big impact on the way the financial sector looks at fossil fuel divestment, Schmidt said.

“The problem right now is there aren’t many large funds available now that are fossil free for institutions like SU to put their endowments in,” Schmidt said.

The Investment and Endowment Committee and the SU administration, Schmidt said, seem to be taking this commitment to divestment “very seriously.”

The first part of SU’s commitment was to remove all direct investments in fossil fuel companies. The second part is to work to minimize, as much as possible, any exposure to the fossil fuel industry through the university’s index funds or other co-mingled assets, Schmidt said.

Schmidt added that he can see a future when SU does not have any of its endowment funds in fossil fuel companies. However, he said this will most likely take some time to achieve, considering SU has an endowment of $1.2 billion — one of the largest endowments of any higher education institution to divest so far.

González said in an October interview with The Daily Orange that SU is probably one of five institutions across the country right now that has taken the stance against fossil fuel investment. Other institutions, she said, have only divested from coal, not all fossil fuels.

SU’s investment committee, González said, has been very active in the implications of the long-term impacts of socially responsible divesting.

“It is a national conversation right now and there were some donors to this university who were not happy with us when that decision was made,” she said.

González said university administrators are also thinking about ways to continue dialogue that will allow them to replace the funds that were lost from the people who did not agree with SU’s decision to divest.

Chancellor Kent Syverud said in an October interview with The Daily Orange that he doesn’t expect the decision to divest to have a significant effect on SU’s endowment, but said it could slightly affect endowment in either direction.

Quinn said because it has been less than a year since SU made the announcement, it is too soon to tell if there will be any negative performance effects related to the decision. However, he said, SU is not expecting to see any.

The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry announced its plans to divest from fossil fuels on Dec. 1, making it the first SUNY campus to set a divestment goal.

Schmidt said both the Divest SU and Divest ESF campaigns have put pressure on each other to continue work with divestment. Now that both campaigns have achieved a major goal, their current work is on continuing to raise awareness about climate change and environmental issues, Schmidt said.

“We’re going to continue to make sure that the process of divesting is transparent and actually completed,” Schmidt said.

—Justin Mattingly, news editor, and Brett Samuels, managing editor, contributed reporting to this article.

Published on December 8, 2015 at 10:20 pm

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