FACULTY COMMENTS:
Julian Agyeman
In 1977, I was an undergraduate at Durham University in the North of England. The anti-apartheid movement at my university was very active - as it was on so many college campuses at the time. It was aimed both at getting students to boycott and the university to disinvest from the major British bank that had investments in apartheid South Africa, namely Barclays Bank. The idea was to build enough momentum to force it to stop doing business in South Africa thereby pressurizing the government to either reform its politics or completely risk economic isolation. Our goal was to end apartheid - the institutionalized racial segregation system of the South African government. As a result of our efforts, Barclays pulled out of South Africa in 1986.

Twenty years later in 1996, I went to see a free Nelson Mandela in London. He had, after years of imprisonment by the South African government, been democratically elected as president of his country. He came to thank the anti-apartheid movement in the UK, and especially the students, whose disinvestment actions had helped provide the needed pressure on the South Africa government to hold free elections
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Seventeen years later, we are now faced with another challenge that will have massive discriminatory impacts– climate change. Though felt by everyone on the planet, it is now, and will continue to be the least privileged and most vulnerable global citizens that suffer most. Therefore, we should act now, taking a principled and moral stand, by divesting the university of its endowments in fossil fuel companies. I invite my fellow faculty to join in supporting this petition.
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