This is going to make the progressives on campus very unhappy. Oh well.

Campus Reform reports.

NYU rejects fossil fuel divestment as meaningless political statement

The New York University Board of Trustees rejected vehement demands from students to divest from fossil fuels because doing so would have amounted to a meaningless political statement.

According to Washington Square News, NYU President Andrew Hamilton explained the Board’s reasoning in an email to the university Thursday in which he explains that a divestment of their holdings in fossil fuel companies, as students had requested in a 2015 University Senate resolution, would be more of a political statement than an actual strategy for fighting climate change.

“We applaud the efforts of faculty, students, and staff to advocate for addressing climate change and in proposing divestment, but do not support NYU using its endowment as a tool for simply making statements,” Hamilton explained. “We understand that some proponents of divestment argue that divestment in and of itself can help to advance the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependency on fossil fuels. However, we are not persuaded by this argument.”

Board of Trustees Chair William Berkley added that the university would not give up its fight against climate change, but would do so using campus-wide initiatives, such as focusing on lowering NYU’s greenhouse gas emissions, raising awareness on campus, and other projects.

The NYU Board’s decision comes on the heels of a similar case at Stanford University, where students and faculty protested their university’s fossil fuel investments by threatening to withhold donations until their demands are met, only to be similarly rebuffed by the Board of Trustees.