The Board of Trustees has in place a set of policies that specify when they will consider divestment, as well as standards that must be met for a divestment decision. Specifically, the board will consider a proposal for divestment from the Cornell community when either the President forwards a resolution from one of the shared governance assemblies, or all five of the assemblies support such a resolution. Once the board takes up consideration of divestment, they will divest only when:
- a company’s actions or inactions are “morally reprehensible;” and also
- the divestiture will likely have a meaningful impact toward correcting the specified harm and will not result in disproportionate offsetting societal consequences; or
- the company contributes to harm so grave that it would be inconsistent with the goals
and principles of the university.
These policies were adopted by the board in early 2016. At that time, the Board was responding to resolutions from all five shared governance groups calling for divestment from fossil fuels. Since then, the investment landscape has changed considerably, as noted above in the discussion of ESG principles. Sustainability broadly, including the issue of consideration of fossil fuel divestment, was discussed informally at the January board meeting, and it is anticipated that the issue will be considered again if the resolutions currently under consideration are advanced to the board.
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