Professor Freeman, until now, you have justified your position as helping reform ConocoPhillips from the inside. The Willow Project makes clear that this isn’t working. Despite your years of service, ConocoPhillips remains further from Paris alignment than almost all of its peer investor-owned fossil fuel companies. This makes it a laggard even by the overall standards of an industry nowhere near net-zero ready. At a certain point, it is important to ask yourself whether you are being used — if ConocoPhillips isn’t paying for your expertise, but instead co-opting the respect and legitimacy accorded to someone of your position.
We know you care about fighting climate change. That’s why we hope you see that there’s a more effective way for you to use your expertise and authority. You have the power to make a stand against big oil right now. Currently, you owe a fiduciary duty to a company whose business model is materially reliant on more fossil fuel extraction. By ending your position as a board member at ConocoPhillips, you would send a clear message that fossil fuel expansion is not the path of a responsible actor. You would protect Harvard — and yourself — from exposure to an industry on the wrong side of history and science. And you would support Harvard’s broader movement towards dissociation from fossil fuels. Empirically speaking, fossil fuel ties skew research agendas, undermine academic freedom, and harm universities’ public standings. If the university’s climate leaders want to best help the institution fulfill its potential, it’s their responsibility to lead it from big oil’s toxic grip.
Professor Freeman, you have done important climate work in the course of your career, but it risks being overshadowed by the conflict of interest posed by your simultaneous leadership roles at Harvard and ConocoPhillips. A stronger stand against the fossil fuel industry is necessary across all of academia, and your time to make a stronger stand is now. Do not continue to grant legitimacy to ConocoPhillips by sitting on their board of directors. Choose your commitments to the climate over your commitments to an industry whose influence on academia and on the world has been nothing but toxic. We urge you to act now: we are amidst a real opportunity to build a better future, but the window is rapidly closing.
Sincerely,
Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard
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