SEATTLE — Seattle University has withdrawn all its investments from companies that hold fossil fuel reserves, making it Washington’s first higher education institution to do so.
The move also makes Seattle University the first Jesuit university in the world to divest from fossil fuels.
The university announced a five-year divestment plan in 2018, estimating at the time that $16.3 million of the university’s $230 million endowment went to fossil fuel companies.
Student activists began the push to divest as early as 2012, and continued until the Board of Trustees approved the divestment plan in 2018.
Students with Sustainable Student Action, a campus environmental justice group, had written a letter in 2017 to then-President Stephen Sundborg, urging his support to divest from fossil fuels in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement to mitigate effects of the climate crisis. (Sundborg retired in 2021.)
The university reached its 50% reduction goal nine months early in March 2020. Its endowment, made up of donations, was estimated at $285 million this June, officials said in a news release.
“Full divestment is in line with our Jesuit values, including a deep commitment to environmental sustainability,” Seattle University President Eduardo Peñalver said in a statement.
Many institutions have announced plans to divest, but very few have taken the steps to do so, he wrote.
The Board of Regents at the University of Washington unanimously voted last year to divest from fossil fuels by 2027. Since Seattle University’s 2018 commitment, six other Jesuit universities have made some level of commitment to divest, according to the university’s release.
Educational institutions make up almost 16% of the organizations that have divested from fossil fuels worldwide. Government institutions make up 11%.
