After years of planning and construction, Northeastern finally opened its new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC) on Monday. Meant to herald a new era of collaboration between students and faculty across a wide variety of academic disciplines, the impressive new building is a physical manifestation of President Joseph E. Aoun’s goal of making Northeastern a center for research and innovation for the 21st century.
ISEC symbolizes the kind of work that must occur if we are to combat complex global challenges: Work that is multifaceted, collaborative and holistic by nature. The complex, which cost around a quarter of a billion dollars, will serve as an important addition to the growing university, and will help define and better serve its mission. It could also be flooded in 50 years.
DivestNU has no qualms with the research that will be done in this building; in fact, we are excited and encouraged to see our peers and mentors working toward bold solutions to solve complex problems like climate change. Our grievances are rooted in the administration’s continued hypocrisy and negligence when it comes to the urgency of the climate crisis.
We don’t need to repeat the oft-stated facts that over 97 percent of climate scientists agree that the atmosphere is warming at an unprecedented rate, that all 12 of the hottest years on record have occurred since 1998 or that the City of Boston could be flooded by the second half of this century. The administration knows these facts, and based on its most recent investment in ISEC, understands that climate change is an existential threat to civilization.
Yet, even with these dire predictions, the university continues to invest in the fossil fuel industry, which not only contributes the atmospheric pollutants responsible for global warming, but has also intentionally misled the public about the existence and severity of climate change and its causes.
Research being conducted by scientists like those who will work in ISEC has been actively and consistently undermined by the nefarious business interests in which Northeastern has invested tens of millions of dollars. The university is investing in, and therefore promoting, the success of an industry that has worked tirelessly to delegitimize the research of the very scientists and thinkers whose work ISEC is meant to advance. DivestNU sees this as a supremely hypocritical, morally unsound decision on behalf of the administration.
This glaring, unapologetic hypocrisy sends a clear message to both students and faculty that betting on the success of the fossil fuel industry is more important to Northeastern’s administration than the work being done on campus and, ultimately, the wellbeing of our planet. ISEC could very well produce some of the finest academic research regarding climate change and beyond, but when the university continues to seek profits at the expense of the environment, it reminds the community that although science may be a worthy talking point, profit remains the ultimate goal for Northeastern’s administrators.
Divesting $60 million from an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars will not financially harm that industry. The goal of the divestment movement has never been to bring down the fossil fuel industry financially through individual campaigns, but to make a statement that this industry can no longer be accepted as a socially, politically or ethically viable investment option. With a commitment to divestment from many institutions, however, tangible economic change can be made.
We believe that by divesting its endowment from the fossil fuel industry, Northeastern will send a clear message—that science, and the inescapable reality of a changing climate, is of greater importance than the pursuit of fleeting profits (and it might eventually save them major losses as well). Only when the university makes a total and unwavering commitment to fighting climate change, will ISEC’s vision be fully realized. Until then, DivestNU will continue its indefatigable pursuit of environmental justice.
– Kyle McAdam is a third-year environmental studies and political science combined major. DivestNU is a coalition of students advocating for Northeastern University’s total divestment from the fossil fuel industry.
