The Fossil Free Research Movement Is Taking Off At Universities

A student-led effort to get fossil fuel money out of university research is building on the divestment movement’s biggest successes.

When over 40 Cambridge students and academics occupied the elite U.K. university’s BP Institute earlier this year, they were escalating one of the newest, fastest-growing campaigns focused on dissociating higher education institutions from fossil fuels. For just over an hour, activists from the grassroots initiative Fossil Free Research held a sit-in inside the building named after one of Europe’s largest oil producers, while making speeches and staging a street theater production that called attention to links between BP and the school.

“We’re drawing attention to how the fossil fuel industry continues to infiltrate prestigious academic institutions, mooch off their credibility, and even exert influence over the production of knowledge crucial to shaping climate policy,” said Ilana Cohen, a lead organizer for the international Fossil Free Research campaign, who is currently a senior at Harvard.

Fossil Free Research launched earlier this year and aims to build on momentum from the successful fossil fuel divestment movement at universities in the U.S., U.K. and beyond. It is pushing higher education institutions to commit to not taking money from coal, oil and gas corporations for research, particularly that relates to climate science. “These companies shouldn’t be shaping research when they have a clear incentive to distort it,” Cohen said.