Not content with trying to divest from fossil fuels and Israel, higher ed is now setting its sights on tobacco.

Cory Weinberg of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Divestment From ‘Moral Evil?’

The Board of Trustees at the University of Pennsylvania will weigh an unusual question next month: Are tobacco companies “morally evil”?

If trustees decide the companies that spin out products that kill people “create substantial social injury,” the university will have met its self-imposed grounds for divestment. More than 500 senior faculty members signed a petition this year urging the university to pull out investments from those companies – a quarter-century after Harvard University did the same.

“Just because we’re late doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it,” said Chris Feudtner, a professor of medical ethics who has helped advocate for divestment.

The university wouldn’t only be behind the times, it would be bucking the divestment trends. Student and faculty activists at colleges across the country have called on administrators to divest from companies that produce coal and fossil fuels – gaining a major win earlier this month when Stanford University pledged to sell its holdings in coal.

But professors at Penn got interested in other kinds of holdings once they realized last year that the university – which has research-heavy medical, nursing and public health schools – still invests a slice of its $7.7 billion endowment in tobacco companies.