Divestment Activists Confront Yale Chief Investment Officer Swensen

Today, Yale Chief Investments Officer David Swensen was half an hour into a Poynter Fellowship in Journalism talk with Swensen and NPR correspondent Chris Arnold on the topic of personal finance when it was interrupted. 40 climate change activists from various Yale and New Haven advocacy groups stood up and wanted a response to their demands for fossil fuel and Puerto Rican debt divestment.

Swensen did not respond to the protesters, and the Yale administration did not seem surprised by the demonstration. Associate Dean of Yale College George Levesque announced to the audience prior to the talk that if a demonstration were to occur and did not end in a timely manner, Yale Police would be called to end the protest.

The protest marks a change in the strategy of the Endowment Justice Coalition because this was the first time the activists directly confronted investments officials with their demands. The Coalition includes Fossil Free Yale, Despierta Boricua and the Yale Democratic Socialists.

See Jesse Nadel, Divestment Activists Confront Swensen, Yale Daily News, April 3, 2019.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.