To divest, or not to divest?
On Thursday, April 9, members of the MIT community will gather to hear arguments for and against the Institute divesting from the fossil-fuel industry. The event — titled “Should MIT Divest? A Debate on Fossil Fuel Investment” — will be held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium, and will be webcast live. It is the fourth of a series of open-forum spring events that are part of the MIT Climate Change Conversation. “Divestment has been one of the most strongly debated potential actions of academic institutions in recent times,” says Roman Stocker, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and chair of the Committee on the MIT Climate Change Conversation. “We decided: Why don’t we tackle it head-on? Why don’t we stage a debate, in the classical academic sense of the term, in which two teams explore all the possible arguments for and against divestment?” Of Thursday’s event, Stocker adds,...