As of now, 584 students and alumni have signed our petition.
Get Involved
- Harvard organizations can join the growing list of endorsing parties in our letter by filling out our Co-signatories Form.
- Individuals at Harvard can sign our Petition.
UPDATE!
Late on June 6th, we received correspondence from the Office of the President directing us to the school's recent renewal of their commitment to the American Campuses Act on Climate Pledge. This correspondence contained no further comment on Harvard's intentions concerning the Second Nature "We Are Still In" Coalition or providing an acknowledgment of the current administration's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
As 183 other institutions of higher learning have committed to upholding the Paris Agreement through the Second Nature Coalition--including two co-signatories on the American Campuses Act on Climate Pledge--we have penned a response to President Faust reiterating our demands. Until they are met, we will continue to garner petition signatures and organizational support.
Our response to President Faust can be found here.
A Harvard Crimson article documenting the movement thus far can be found here.
As 183 other institutions of higher learning have committed to upholding the Paris Agreement through the Second Nature Coalition--including two co-signatories on the American Campuses Act on Climate Pledge--we have penned a response to President Faust reiterating our demands. Until they are met, we will continue to garner petition signatures and organizational support.
Our response to President Faust can be found here.
A Harvard Crimson article documenting the movement thus far can be found here.
The Letter
Dear President Faust,
On December 12, 2015, 195 nations came together to commit to limiting anthropogenic climate change. In adding their membership to the Paris accord, these nations officially recognized the increasing role that climate change, and combating it, will play in shaping the economic and political atmosphere of the twenty-first century. These global accords, nine years in the making, are designed to ensure that global temperature rise will not exceed two degrees Celsius and to aid countries in building defenses against the effects of climate change (1). Climate experts agree that without this action current trends in increasing sea level rise, species extinctions, and natural catastrophes will accelerate. Given these stakes, all but two nations around the world have since pledged themselves to the Paris accords.
However, on Thursday, June 1, 2017, the current U.S. administration chose to recant on that pledge, becoming just the third nation to reject the accords. This places the United States in a minority that we firmly believe is in danger of ending up on the wrong side of history. The administration’s folly not only threatens American global leadership, business prospects, and national security, but also severely hinders the accord’s ability to curb global emissions to the extent necessary to prevent irreversible damage. American withdrawal from the accords endangers the world’s biodiversity and human communities, and is predicated on political reasoning riddled with faults. Therefore, we urge Harvard to join a growing coalition of concerned parties within the United States dedicated to ensuring that our country’s obligations to limit climate change do not go unfulfilled.
Harvard is home to some of the most cutting-edge climate change research in the world. The University has long recognized that a changing climate poses a dire threat to people around the world, as well to the rest of our planet’s life. Across disciplines, and around the world, Harvard is teaching, learning about, and acting to address climate change. With the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris accords, now is the time to redouble our commitment to science-based planning for our climate’s future through new initiatives building off of Harvard’s past successful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. With this letter, we ask you, on behalf of Harvard, to commit our institution to the Paris accords, as a growing number of parties are currently doing through an initiative organized by Bloomberg Philanthropies. As of now, this coalition consists of three governors, over 30 mayors, and over 80 university presidents, yet Harvard’s voice appears conspicuously absent (2). By joining this coalition, as well as pursuing other ways to commit to a sustainable future, Harvard would maintain its integral role in climate leadership at this critical time.
In her Commencement speech to the class of 2017, President Faust advised graduating students not to “stand safely on the sidelines.” We, as the current students and recent graduates of the Harvard College Conservation Society, refuse to watch anthropogenic climate change from the sidelines. We are proud of the work our organization has begun to empower students to conserve the environment, and we hope that Harvard will join our commitment to action on this issue. If the current administration refuses to join the international community in safeguarding our planet, it is up to institutions like Harvard to rise to the occasion. The threats of climate change will affect Cambridge, Massachusetts, the United States, and the whole world, and action must be taken at all of these levels in response to it. With our institution’s historical and international influence, a commitment to upholding the Paris accords will send a reverberating message of the importance of forward thinking in both research and changing norms of operation. Given the permanent global stakes of this issue, we believe that it is a moral obligation of the university to make this commitment; doing so will offer leadership to our country as the education we have received here has taught us to do.
Thus, we the undersigned hereby urge the Harvard administration to take action where the United States administration has failed to do so, by pledging themselves to the Paris Climate Agreement and using their influence to lead other institutions to do so as well.
Sincerely,
Katherine Culbertson, President
Andrés López-Garrido, Advocacy Project Leader
Jonathan Hamilton, Chief Operating Officer
Julius Bright Ross, Chief Operating Officer Emeritus
Abigail Parker, Project Manager Emeritus
Nadia Urrea, Member
and Whitney Hansen, President Emeritus and Founder
Co-signed and endorsed by:
Harvard College Conservation Society Faculty Advisors
Prof. Richard Wrangham
Dr. Elizabeth Ross
Harvard College Conservation Society Affiliated Faculty and Alumni
Prof. Jonathan Losos
Prof. James Hanken
Dr. Russell Mittermeier
Dr. Leeanne Alonso
Harvard College Conservation Society Leaders and Membership
Angie Torres, Marketing Director
Jackie Ho, Chief Operating Officer Emeritus
Camille DeSisto, Project Manager
Chinmay Sonawane, Project Leader
Emma Borjigin-Wang, Project Leader
Lorena Benitez, Project Leader
Sabrina Devereaux, Project Leader
Remi Gosselin, Project Leader
Maria Park, Project Leader
Neil Philip, Project Leader
Lexi Smith, Project Leader
Alicia Juang
Amy Li
Anna Gibbs
Annie Opel
Anthony Henriquez
Anthony O’Neil
Ayanna Dunmore
Beverly Ge
Cara O’Connor
Catherine Bond
Christie Tzelios
Daniel Rivera
Ginny Miller
Greta Wong
Isabel Desisto
Jaelithe Virgin-Downey
Katie Russ
Kevin Blacutt
Liz Benson
Liz Stebbins
Madeleine Ankhelyi
Maggie Chory
Mario Gutierrez
Mary Katherine DeWane
Molly Wieringa
Ike Jin Park
Rachel Kang
Rosie Wigglesworth
Sam Benkelman
Sara Welsh
Savannah Whaley
Scout Leonard
Sean Kinyon
Selena Zhao
Sophie Pesek
William Belfiore
Xilin Zhou
Endorsing Organizations (listed alphabetically)
Chinese Students' Association
Kevin Zhang, Co-President
Lucy Xu, Co-President
Crimson Key Society
Jessika Nebrat, President
Shub Chhokra, Vice President
Theo Mendez, Treasurer
Will Delaney, Secretary
Emma Scornavacchi, Guidebook and Marketing Manager
Kiki Albanese, Freshman Week Coordinator
Spencer Ma, Freshman Week Coordinator
Bruno Moguel Gallegos, Tour Coordinator
Leah Stewart, Tour Coordinator
Maia Suazo-Maler, Historian
Dharma
Anjali Chandra, Co-President
Gopal Vashishtha, Co-President
(In accordance with the Hindu Declaration on Climate Change)
Divest Harvard
Elizabeth D'Haiti, Student Outreach Coordinator
Naima Drecker-Waxman, Student Outreach Coordinator
Sidni Frederick, Education Coordinator
Isa Flores-Jones, Coordinator
Logan Houck, Alumni and Faculty Coordinator
Mattea Mrkusic, Media Coordinator
Fuerza Latina
Zoe Ortiz, Co-President
Leticia Ortega, Co-President
Green '20
Sam Benkelman
Abby Bloomfield
Beverly Ge
Eugenio Donati
Daniel Sherman
Emma Seevak
Isabelle DeSisto
Theodora Mautz, Advisor
HACIA Democracy
Cristina Parajón, President
Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Students Association
Katherine Culbertson, President
McKenna Roberts, Co-Vice President of Community Development
Connor Richardson, Vice President of Finance and Communications
(In accordance with support of the Paris accord from the Vatican and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as per press statement)
Harvard College in Asia Program
Laura Chang, President
Harvard Christian Impact
Thomas Ferland, Co-President
Brandon Hills, Co-President
Helen Kim, Board Member
Caleb Johnson, Board Member
Jack Stansell, Board Member
Harvard College Asia Program
Laura Chang, President
Harvard College Japan Initiative
Miranda Tyson, Co-President
Shane Campayne, Co-President
Harvard Community Garden
Greta Wong, Co-Manager
Isabel Parkey, Co-Manager
Harvard Democrats
Sharon Yang, President
W. Tanner Gildea, Vice President <%2
