University needs to protect the trust it has built in communities affected by environmental injustices.

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As health professional students, staff, faculty, and alumni across Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Children’s Health, we support establishing the strongest possible guardrails in the University’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry."

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A group of six graduate researchers with diverse opinions on fossil fuel companies’ role in funding Stanford research reached a consensus on criteria for evaluating the sources and objectives of research funding, as well as actions for enforcing these criteria — Stanford Daily

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It is shockingly credulous to allow those who have financed or supported oil wars, anti-competitive rents and science denial to advise us on how to solve many of the problems they exacerbated. As Anand Giridharadas points out in his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, it is like assuming that “arsonists make the best firefighters.” — Stanford Daily

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osh De Leon, Maria Doerr, Josh Lappen, and Sarah Brickman argue for students to continue to push Stanford to divest from fossil fuels —Stanford Daily

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Amid COP27, members of the Fossil Free Research movement took action around the world, protesting the influence of Big Oil on crucial climate change studies —The Nation

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Doerr and Stanford have a choice — will they be willing partners with the oil industry, accepting their well-documented misinformation as fact and their money as clean? Or will they try the Princeton model, and be financially and intellectually independent? —Stanford Daily

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Here we summarize why the Doerr School’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry is damaging to our university’s reputation, values, and research integrity, and invite the Stanford community to imagine a different future for the Doerr School —Stanford Daily

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Every research dollar, lab hour, and project report that is beholden to or biased by fossil fuel industry influence is a missed opportunity to address the climate crisis —Common Dreams

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A siloed and closed-door decision-making process is vulnerable to special interest groups and short-sighted decisions that will forego deeper inquiry and deliberation on how we might build a new school that benefits the broader global community and generations to come. Given the long-term impact of these decisions, we urge Dean Majumdar and the Doerr School leadership to shape the school in a truly transparent and democratic manner. —Stanford Daily

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For years, Stanford leadership has gestured toward an interest in environmental justice (EJ). This December, university leaders took an important step in launching the EJ Cluster Hire — originally proposed by the Stanford EJ Working Group in 2018 and widely supported by the Stanford community. The goal is to fill a glaring gap: despite environmental justice being necessary to achieving a sustainable society, we have no environmental justice scholars on the Academic Council Stanford faculty —Stanford Daily.

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The university seems set to replicate the mistakes of past climate research: soliciting oil and gas funding while paying lip service to environmental justice —The Nation.

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Thom Hersbach argues that under Dean Majumdar’s four-part test, no fossil fuel company qualifies to fund Stanford’s School of Sustainability. “For now, 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,” Hersbach writes —Stanford Daily.

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To advance environmental justice leadership, Stanford requires institutional structures and resources to support EJ research, teaching, communication, and community building in the new school —Stanford Daily.

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Over the years these companies have provided considerable financial support to different programs at Stanford, which has been valuable to the school, faculty members and students. For that support, the companies have gained access to extremely talented research scientists and engineers and first chance at hiring Stanford’s top students. By being associated with Stanford’s top-flight research programs, these companies have also received good publicity and burnished their reputation for innovation. All these benefits have come at a very cost-effective price to them —Stanford Daily.

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Accepting money from fossil fuel interests, even those claiming to diversify their portfolios, fundamentally undermines the school’s core learning competencies, tarnishes its academic reputation and hampers its stated mission of “solving the most complex problems in climate and sustainability” —Stanford Daily.

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Stanford’s decision to maintain its ties to the fossil fuel industry is incompatible with the new school’s focus on actionable solutions to address climate change. Let’s be clear: fossil fuel companies’ contributions to universities such as Stanford are not only philanthropic. These donations are part of a carefully crafted smokescreen, one that disguises their role in a crisis they’re perpetuating, one that helps them gain false legitimacy, and one that wins them influence on climate change-related research —Stanford Daily.

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