Divestment and Democracy at a Canadian University

Abstract

The campaign to divest the endowment of McGill University from fossil fuel has had amazing success in using scientific knowledge to inspire democratic action. Organizations collectively representing all students and academic staff, and most non-academic staff, have voted overwhelmingly in favor of divestment. There is one small problem, however. Unlike Oxford or Cambridge, where a majority vote among all faculty would be the final word about any and all university policy, McGill suffers rule by a plutocratic Board of Governors. This impairment parallels and connects with the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has on Canadian environmental policy.