Stanford’s current fossil-fuel Partners do not match Dean Majumdar’s criteria and the Board of Trustees’ Paris commitment. Accepting funding from fossil-fuel companies at the institutional level should be a non-starter if Dean Majumdar and the Board intend to follow their own guidelines.

While the news of the Doerr School of Sustainability is certainly exciting, the value of an institution’s work cannot be extricated from the values upon which it is built. Pledging to accept fossil fuel funding and partner with the very industry that has stalwartly opposed climate action for decades is not only wholly misaligned with the will of students — it promises to feed the same maelstrom of political inaction, mistrust of science and perpetuation of environmental injustice that it claims to counter.