There is a whirlwind of news that we are bombarded with each day, and it can be difficult to find any grasp of what is happening in our country. There is a piece that I want to emphasize as especially important to us as engineers though: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As the head of DOGE, Elon Musk is employing an intentional strategy: choosing to have most of its members, lieutenants, and grunts be engineers, especially young engineers. As young engineers ourselves, I ask everyone to reflect on why that is.
My theory is this: as engineers, we’re trained to dive headfirst into things we don’t know about and work our way out to understand, change, and optimize. Yet we are primarily—if not solely—trained to see through a technical lens. I see it manifest in countless ways in myself and at Olin. There’s a problem: Let me try to fix it! Something is inefficient: Let me optimize it! Build this thing: Learn enough about it to experiment with! There’s a constant desire to dive right into solving the problem before we step back and look at the pool: is it worth diving in? And how far might our ripples flow? It limits our awareness of the world and our perception of the impact we have on it. I reflect on CD, the class that encourages us most to engage with non-technical concepts of impact. For all of the care and understanding we were taught to search for, how many concluded that society itself had a fundamental necessity for change? Our designs were limited by the implicit conception of what we could offer as engineers—what products we could create within established systems, not what larger change or impact we could dwell upon. And CD is the core class that most centers a non-technical impact approach to our education! Our other engineering experiences are about finely polishing our technical lenses. Any larger evaluation of non-technical impacts are briefly tacked onto a class or two, if addressed at all. Intentional or not, and no matter what values we state, those experiences train us to not dwell long upon the larger societal impact of our work.
Many DOGE engineers did not shape their lives around the larger societal impact they would have, but on doing the technical work that was best for themselves. I know this because they didn’t go to create non-profits or change policy or improve public interest technologies after college. They went to study engineering, then they went to intern or work at Tesla and SpaceX, likely because it would pay them the most or give them the best technical experience or was simply just cool engineering work. They shaped their lives around honing their technical, problem-solving abilities, then choosing the work that was most personally profitable. When they were offered a spot in DOGE, it made sense economically to bind themselves to Musk and if nothing else, they got a new exciting optimization problem: the government.
In the face of a dauntingly complex and competitive world, we all have been conditioned to look after ourselves: it is the very foundation of our economic system. Especially as engineers, we’re told, implicitly or explicitly, that we are justified in finding what will be the most profitable for us, the impact is for others to decide. I understand there are financial realities, and I acknowledge that I speak from a place of privilege, but an awareness of impact is something that constitutes the very foundation of what makes any person a responsible member of society—a respect and acknowledgement that your choices will unavoidably impact others. In the absence of that awareness of broader perspectives arises an absence of empathy, humility, and understanding.
And that is why I am afraid of DOGE.
The invocation of Nazism is a heavy, overused trope which risks diminishing its true horror. But in observing DOGE, I see a clear parallel of how engineers become the mechanisms of hate, of how an indifferent and banal evil arises when technical education is divorced from broader perspectives.
The parallel is of Albert Speer.1 Young and ambitious, he graduated in architecture from the Technical University of Berlin but lacked any real political fervor. He aligned himself with the Nazi Party in the 30’s largely because their promise to reinvent German culture would afford him more opportunities to do the grand architecture he envisioned creating. By 1933, he was lucratively involved in designing pageantry and building plans, and when war broke out, Speer was chosen as the Minister of Armaments and War Production. In 1943, the London Observer examined him:
“Speer is, in a sense, more important for Germany today than Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels or the generals. Speer is not one of the flamboyant and picturesque Nazis. Whether he has any other than conventional political opinions is unknown. He might have joined any other political party that gave him a job and a career. He is very much the average man, well dressed, civil, non-corrupt, very middle class in his style of life, with a wife and six children. Much less than any of the other German leaders does he stand for anything particularly German or particularly Nazi. He rather symbolizes a type which has become increasingly important in all belligerent countries; the pure technician, the classless, bright young man, without background, with no other original aim than to make his way in the world, and no other means than his technical and managerial ability. It is the lack of psychological and spiritual balast and the ease with which he handles the terrifying technical and organizational machinery of our age which makes this slight type go extremely far nowadays … This is their age; the Hitlers and the Himmlers we may get rid of, but the Speers, whatever happens to this particular man, will be long with us.”
This quote serves as a constant, shuddering reminder of what a technical education can mean, and is what we have a responsibility to reckon with as engineers. The employment of technically focused, ambitious youth is the strategy that Elon Musk and the Trump Administration are employing with DOGE members. They were given a directive to make huge cuts, to root out DEI, and to report back. They excel at it. This is not a random coincidence, but an intentional tactic. We’ve seen it used before, and we have to ask ourselves what we must do as we see it now.
I am not saying to eschew engineering as an evil, but know that engineers who do not actively grapple with and work to change their impact are engineers that function as tools, and there will always be those that will seek to use us as such. This can be for good, sure, but more often it is used for extraction, exploitation, and oppression. No movement, no organization, no company, and no regime is possible without the support or, more pertinently, the complicity of its engineers.
We cannot run behind the justification of a non-partisan and impartial self-interest. We cannot hide behind the thought that someone else would do it anyways. We more than anyone have an obligation to systems-level understanding, knowing what we are building and for whom we are building it. Creating an electric car to learn in college is different from creating an electric car that profits a white supremacist. Optimizing a drone to evaluate infrastructure health is different from optimizing a drone that is going to be used for urban warfare. Building trains is different if you know what, or who, those trains will hold. Your work will not result in the creation of apolitical technologies—it will be placed in the hands of people and organizations that will seek to use them for their own purposes.
I do not say this to exclude any companies from your job search, but none of us are exempt from confronting the deeper impacts of the work that we do, because that is how we are used. If you plan to work for an organization that you know is not doing good, then actively reflect on the power that you have to change that work from within and strive to do so. Theories of change differ from outside change to inside change and from issue to issue, but no matter what your theory is, you cannot bury your head from your impact for your own self interest. Complicity is exactly what they desire of you.
When I look at DOGE, I don’t see a group of conniving masterminds. I see a group of engineers who I am familiar with: who when they get their directive, see it only as the problem they’ve been given. And the tool gets to work.
The reason I am afraid of DOGE is not because it is a group of intentionally evil or malicious people, it’s because I see a clear parallel to the worst of history: a clear warning of how technically focused, ambitious people are used. It reminds me of lessons from the past, and it gives me shudders of the future.
I am afraid of DOGE because it is a group of people that I know well, and who have been trained in the same way that I have been. I am afraid because they demonstrate clearly what can happen if I stop striving to grapple with the complexity of the world and the impact that I am having on it. I urge you to heed the same warning.
Summarizing a person’s life and motivations is hard to do briefly. I do not claim this is a definitive account of Albert Speer, but is what I have found as the impression from the account of a Nuremberg Prosecutor (King) who wrote a book on him and the below quote, as well as other online sources. ↩︎
When I sent in my first-ever article to Frankly Speaking a month ago, I didn’t expect people to care so much. It was mostly a vent and a way to call some people out on their actions and let them know they need to improve.
But people listened, and honestly, that restored a lot of my faith in Olin. I have been watching and listening, keeping track of how others have reacted, and some have improved their actions and even apologized to black students for their past micro and macro aggressions.
I have been amazed by the way Oliners of all backgrounds have responded to my article. Some told me it made them finally feel seen, others said they weren’t surprised, but that it made them think more critically about this community, many sparked conversations because of it. Thank you for listening, and thank you for caring for those who chose to learn from my experience rather than see it an outlier.
Not all the responses to my article were positive, though, Some people forgot about the article immediately after reading it, some refused to read it after seeing the headline, some say it was exaggerated to cause drama—I’ve even heard some people believe that I’m not really black and that this was trying to smear Olin’s reputation.
Let me make a few things clear: nothing was exaggerated, the experiences I described in my article were real, and I am currently a black female student at Olin. In fact, I left out some horrible details.
The best thing to come from this article was that this helped strengthen and bring the black community at Olin together. So, if you are struggling with racism at Olin, come to a USB-C meeting. We can’t fix the system, but we can support you and give you a space where you are heard.
Other black students have shared with me that they faced similar experiences to mine. Many black students and staff have been told explicitly that they don’t belong here because they’re black. Many black students are called by the wrong name by their classmates and teachers, and we don’t say anything to avoid fights, but it hurts. When working on projects and research, our ideas are often ignored, and we have to push extra hard for a single idea to be considered. These racist practices have been normalized at Olin, and that is what makes for such a toxic environment.
Many unconsciously believe that we can’t be racist because we are a small, liberal engineering school in Massachusetts. The answer is that everything is rooted in racism in the USA. Spaces like Olin that try to pretend systemic racism doesn’t exist, will only perpetuate the problem. The only way to actually combat racism is to talk about it. Acknowledge how your privilege will disadvantage others. Recognize the power you hold over others. Stop believing that you aren’t the problem. We all are, including me. If you want to learn more about confronting internal bias, I recommend reading some of Ibram X. Kendi’s books, many you can get through the library. To those who claim they want to change, here is your first step.
Olin says it wants to get better, but know that I will keep watching. I will keep providing a safe space for other black students. I will follow intently everything the administration does to better support their students.
I came to Olin so excited to learn and innovate. I had high hopes of becoming a great engineer, making great friends, and doing important research with kind professors. Overall, I have been satisfied with my classes and this community. I have great and understanding professors and strong friendships. I am learning in a way that finally fits me, and for once I don’t feel out of place. But I am not okay and not happy. I have been holding this in for a while to avoid causing trouble, but I won’t be silent anymore.
Once, when I first got to Olin, I was in the library reviewing some course material. As I was studying, an upperclassman who I had never met approached me and stood next to my seat, looking at me very intently. I greeted them and asked if I could help them with anything. They responded curtly, “People like you don’t belong here.”
I was shaken and said the first logical thing to come to mind: “If you mean here at Olin, I am here to become an engineer.”
The upperclassman smirked, then remarked before walking away, “People like you don’t seem like they would be good engineers.”
For a second, I was confused by what they meant by “people like me”. Women? Did they think I was a BOW student? Why me over anybody else in the library?
I then took a good look around and realized what that upperclassman meant. I was the only black student in the library. I was the only black woman in the library.
What the upperclassman meant was: Black women shouldn’t be engineers and don’t belong at Olin.
That hurt me more than I could ever express in words. After that interaction, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Someone felt so strongly that I didn’t belong at Olin that they went out of their way to tell me, just so I would know my place. And no one else in the library piped up to defend me, came to comfort me, or even shot me a sympathetic look. Most even turned away.
To some, this might not seem like a big deal, but it was. I am no stranger to racism and sexism in the STEM world: I was bullied out of coding camp at age 10 by a group of boys who insisted that girls are “too sissy to handle computers.” In 7th grade, a teacher had students pass around my perfect score test while announcing “if someone like [my name] can get a perfect score, then anyone can succeed in my class”. When I got a spot in AP Computer Science in 11th grade, some boys at my school started an online campaign against me, saying that the “diversity spot was taking away seats from guys who actually deserved it”.
I came to Olin because I hoped that a STEM school run by an esteemed black female engineer would be better, and would be an inclusive and uplifting environment. Yet someone felt so much hate at the idea of a black woman being at Olin and becoming an engineer that they had to tell me that the community I worked so hard to become a part of didn’t fully accept me and never would. That broke my heart because my dream, my safe space, my community, were now gone. Despite this, I will stay in a space that is set against me and I can’t change it alone.
Despite my crushing disappointment, I pushed my doubts from that interaction aside and let myself believe that it was just one person and the culture at Olin is different, but it’s not.
In my time at Olin, I have experienced more microaggressions than I can count, been left out of team talks because my input “didn’t seem necessary”, and my mental health has been ignored by both students and staff alike. I even had another interaction with a different student who told me that I “don’t seem like the typical engineer”, and that maybe I should “reconsider if Olin is the right place for me”. This prejudiced culture has had horrible impacts on my mental and emotional health. I frequently had panic attacks last semester and developed an eating disorder from pent-up discomfort, rage, and insecurity that I felt nobody noticed. I have been close to fainting and no one ever asked me if I was okay.
I never said anything because I knew that if I told others, no one would care. People don’t care if the black girl is unhappy, if she is in a bad place mentally, because to most, we are forgettable and negligible. That is just a historical fact. I have seen students see me have a panic attack and walk past me laughing about how I’m “so extra”. And when I have shared my story people zone out, say I “overreacted”, or pretend to care only to forget the next day.
The first person who listened to me about the library incident was Gilda. She was the first person who noticed I was struggling and took the time to talk to me and share her own experiences, so I didn’t feel so alone. I was surprised by the fact that Gilda, an esteemed and respected engineer and certifiable genius, also faces racism at Olin and has also had many students come up to her and tell her “you don’t belong at Olin” and yet they are never able to explain why.
It is crazy to me how someone as wonderfully kind as her receives so much hate from the student body, but I have noticed the ones most vocal with this hate are white.
Now, I am not trying to imply that all students at Olin are racist and discriminative. I think there are a few who are, but the majority of the student body and some of the staff have clear internal racism that they haven’t addressed. They need to examine their own bias or truly think about where some of their opinions come from. Everyone holds some prejudice—it’s a sad fact about our world. If you don’t work to dismantle your own prejudice, then you are part of the problem.
Olin as a community is racist, and we can’t keep ignoring it.
As a community, we value black students less than other students and lack open spaces where black students feel safe enough to express these feelings. This is what Olin is, and we need to change.
This moment last year, Olin Climate Justice was little more than an idea in the back of my mind. I’ve spent this past year pouring my life and soul into building OCJ.
I understand our group means many things to many people. To me, it represents thousands of hours of work and love and care and courage and determination and resilience and guts and kindness and heart. This may not be your view; that is okay.
OCJ has responded to the claims made by March’s anonymously published article. In this moment, however, that response is immaterial. Instead, in an act of vulnerability, I will tell you that article landed with deep hurt, frustration, and sadness. I recognize this was not the author’s intent, and yet both things can be true. And so I extend an invitation to you.
I hope to use this space to reflect on one rollercoaster of a year, and I invite you to journey with me. These learnings are borne of experience; you may find them vague and unsubstantiated. That is okay too. I invite you to see them as an open question, an opportunity to wonder why I might have learned this.
Above all, I invite you to wonder what Olin could be. And I hope that wonder inspires you enough to act, as it did for me.
I’ve learned that the same anti-democratic structures in this college that center whiteness and maleness and wealth are the same structures that got us into the climate crisis in the first place.
I’ve learned that “collaboration” is wielded by those in power to obscure power differentials, and that when we say “collaboration” we really mean perfunctory student participation.
I’ve learned that “community” is similarly wielded by those with whom I am not in community as a means to suppress dissent.
I’ve learned that we can repeat the words collaboration and community over and over until we drop dead, and yet nothing will substitute for democratic processes that hold people in power accountable.
I’ve learned that student decision making power in this college is predicated on whether people in power feel like listening, and so students are expected to accommodate the whims of unelected white men.
I’ve learned that those in power are seen as collaborative because they maintain a range of things they are willing to do and take student input on, and outside of that range they are steadfast in their opposition.
I’ve learned that the lack of formal decision-making structures at this college prioritizes the “old boy’s club” that has existed from the start, empowers well-liked white men to attain outsized control over every decision, and prevents accountability and real democracy by obscuring power.
I’ve learned that better does not equal good, whether that is relative to other institutions or the Olin of the past, and those in power wield narratives of “change is slow” and “acknowledge small progress” to justify inaction.
I’ve learned that “common ground” and “shared values” are all too often employed when they do not exist, as reasons to ignore the substance of one’s argument.
I’ve learned that “impact” is meaningless when divorced from who we are impacting, what impact we hope to achieve, and why. And that meaninglessness is precisely why those in power love the term. (The same applies for “changemaking” and “do something”, always a low bar).
I’ve learned we’ve set the bar for “caring about sustainability” so low that not denying the existence of the climate crisis is considered enough.
I’ve learned that “sustainability” can mean anything, and so often is used to reinforce business-as-usual operations.
I’ve learned that some are so invested in avoiding discomfort, are so unsettled by efforts to pull back the Olin veil, that they would tear down their fellow students to uphold the systems of oppression that built this college.
I’ve learned that you can spend long nights poring over solar panel proposals and early mornings cleaning out overflowing compost bins, and those in power will turn around and claim credit for that work.
I’ve learned that no matter how hard you work, the credit will go to the cis men around you, while other men will always be happy to offer their unsolicited opinions.
I’ve learned that those in power will co-opt your work until you are no longer palatable to them.
I’ve learned that the only way that white men take me seriously is if I contort into someone calm, collected, and quiet, who never pushes for more.
I’ve learned that it’s one thing to care about sustainability and real environmental impact, which everyone does, and another thing to care enough to prioritize it above CompArch and PIE and Formula. It’s one thing to say you care and another thing to stare wide-eyed in terror at the ticking clock that is 1.5C and look around and think, what the hell are we all doing, acting as if everything can be normal and the same? That we can just keep going like this?
I’ve learned that we’re made too busy to care. For this college and for each other.
The anonymous March 5 Frankly Speaking (FS) article, “Let’s Make Real Environmental Impact,” has me reflecting on what I had hoped to give when I came to Olin in 2018. Prior, I served as a professor for 27 years, the last 13 as the founding co-director of a center for sustainability in engineering. I learned many great and terrible lessons on my path to “have impact.” The first was that we will always have an impact; is it the impact that we want to have?
As I witness the divestment efforts unfolding I am moved to offer a few observations and learnings. I hope they are useful. My first observation is that Olin Climate Justice (OCJ) is cutting an admirable, textbook path of democratic action in service to social justice; I am awed by the high standard of scholarship in their communications that transparently grounds their case for divestment in data and explicit logics. Tyler’s March 9 email (subject: Olin Climate Justice’s Response to Board Statement) is another example. All would do well to follow their lead, it seems to me. A lesson I cannot forget is that I am part of the system that I long to change. The truth of anthropogenic climate change is that my actions are causal to the problem. It is not “someone else” who is to blame–it is me, yet I am not alone.
The March 5, FS article, if I understand it, is expressing a students’ sense of betrayal. It goes a little like this:
OCJ communicates -> Author believes OCJ, presuming factual communication
Board members communicate -> Author believes Board, presuming factual communication
Board communications do not equal OCJ communications
Author concludes OCJ communications are false
Author feels betrayed by OCJ because of 4
All communications, as theorized by linguists Grinder and Brandler1, re-present the world in ways that delete, distort and generalize and therefore are neither factual nor true. I include the things I’m attempting to communicate now (and always, really). Our options are then to test what is said for its coherence with reality, investigate it, or have faith in the speaker. The “faith” option is frequently granted to those with perceived authority, but not always warranted.
I have noticed at Olin that “collaboration” is often conflated with “consultation.” Collaboration is a mode of working that involves mutual respect and open power sharing. There are other properties but collaboration is distinct from consultation which is a mode in which one party holds power and exercises it unilaterally after seeking input from other parties (i,e., “consulting”); cooperation is another mode2. It is useful to recognize the distinction between these modes of working3. As the FS article points out, a dictate that another party adopt one’s point of view is not an act of collaboration–it is, as the biologist Humberto Maturana pointed out, a demand for obedience4. To be clear, the Board’s insistence that OCJ recognize what the Board believes to be a superior non-divestment approach is a demand for obedience; is it not an invitation to collaboration. The communication is this: If you only saw things the way I do, you would know I am right. That is, the assertion that OCJ was “non-collaborative” is a projection of the asserter’s state.
It is very tempting to relate to what is said as right or wrong. What is more likely is that the things said are both right and wrong or equivalently neither right nor wrong. For example, the claim that Environment Social Governance (ESG) is “more effective” than divestment requires all kinds of assumptions about the meaning of “effective.” Effective at what and for whom? Whose standard, shareholders’? How do stakeholders whose life, livelihood and future are stolen rate the “effectiveness”? In the end, I believe the dilemma of divestment must be addressed through authentic collaboration.
In my five years at Olin, I have witnessed cooperation many times, but I have only seen collaboration ~3 times. As I understand it, collaboration requires:
A consciously-held, shared commitment to something larger than any of the party’s individual interests;
A willingness for all parties to suspend their point of view for the sake of 1.
A tolerance and patience with holding ambiguity long enough for a solution to emerge from the emptiness created by 2.
How do we access C? Usually through inquiry: A compels B and produces curiosity; this curiosity causes the parties to real-ize that their individual points of view are not as comprehensive as believed. In this realization, people relax their attachment, literally relax (somatically) and gain access to collective creativity. I have often found at Olin that if we get past B, the space for creativity in the social field (C) collapses. We cannot hold C–it is often said “we don’t have time,” but I think we mean that we don’t have courage.
At this, the end of my career, I have learned that all inequities, whatever form they take–environmental injustice, racial injustice, social injustice, organizational injustice, classroom injustice–are one thing: an abuse of power. The incredible beauty of the Olin community is that we long to do better. For this reason, I came to Olin. As I retire, my hope is that all of us would pursue a conscious awareness of how we wield power and ask, “Is it just?” We all want to live in a thriving world and we are the people we have been waiting for to bring it. I leave you with this quote from the 13-th century Persian poet Rumi:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
In response to the anonymous March 2023 Frankly Speaking article titled “Let’s Make Real Environmental Impact”.
I appreciate the action, courage, and time you put into thinking about the role of OCJ in the climate justice movement on campus. We feel very misrepresented from the perspective that the board of trustees has presented to you, but I want to put that aside for a second and address a simple difference between the way I see the role of OCJ at Olin and the way I think you do:
The climate crisis is now. If we don’t reach net zero by 2030 – less than 7 years away – it will lead to catastrophic loss of lives, livelihood, and much more, especially in the most underserved regions and communities of the world. But you already know this from our articles and banners. I don’t think we have done a good job of explicitly stating the next link.
If we are to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2030, it will only happen if we radically reshape our current value systems. It will only happen if the climate crisis is our number one priority. It will only happen if we challenge the existing power structures around us (including at Olin) which will not lead us to net zero emissions by themselves.
For me, fossil fuel divestment at Olin is important because that act represents a fundamentally different political stance – that fossil fuel companies necessarily need to not exist in 7 years if we are to reach net zero. Fossil fuel divestment is important because it’s asking Oliners to be someone they haven’t been before. Students are learning to protest. The faculty are in the process of passing their first-ever climate-related resolution. The Board is learning that it cannot exist in a bubble and that its meetings can be interrupted by students filled with rage and passion. The discomfort you feel right now is the point. We want the board to divest because they don’t want to do it. The pressure, stress, and perhaps alienation you have felt from the divestment movement is part of the incredibly uncomfortable process of challenging your sense of comfort and stability when something is a crisis.
We can’t make Olin build solar panels tomorrow, but we can make Olin divest tomorrow. Literally. And making that decision would involve the board members we have been meeting with fundamentally reshaping their values very quickly. And I too agree that the board thinks it’s genuinely being collaborative while we are disengaging, but that difference is what defines the climate crisis – we are trying to set the bar for caring a lot, lot, higher.
Ultimately, the divestment movement is about the struggle and what that struggle reveals about Olin. So far, we feel like that struggle has been fruitful – it has completely reshaped the discourse at the college, it has exposed students to nonviolent direct action, and – most importantly – it has brought people like you to think about this, care about this, reach out to people in power, and respond. So thank you, and I genuinely ask you to join the next OCJ meeting. We are unwavering but not perfect, and you will have a lot to learn from our meetings only if you are really ready to challenge a lot of your assumptions because that’s what it takes to combat a global crisis at an unprecedented rate. We have studied and discussed and challenged our own assumptions so much, and trust that we will continue to do so.
I know that this will be difficult for many of my Olin friends to read. I know that if my parents or high school friends somehow found this article, they would not recognize me. And I know that I feel so deeply privileged to stand on the shoulders of giants who brought me and keep me in this school, but that doesn’t mean I stop trying to see through the clouds. My story of care at Olin would not feel genuine to me if it stopped at student support, cultural communities, and building safe, open spaces. I hope you can understand how deeply valuable each of those components are, and OCJ, in the way that I’ve been trying to understand for the past short three years.
No community is exempt from dissent. No institution is too perfect for reckonings of power. No college, no matter how caring, well-intentioned, and hardworking, is exempt from disruption.
I never thought that I would be writing a Frankly Speaking while studying abroad, but turns out that the climate crisis is a crisis, well, everywhere. The island I’m living on has visibly eroded this past semester. It’s time to be honest about how we got here. We at Olin, an institution with an incredible amount of influence, money, and hard-earned respect need to take big, bold steps, because… (say it with me!)
No, I am not an environmentalist because an environmentalist forgets that the climate crisis is fundamentally a crisis of injustice that cannot be fixed by recycling harder. I am not an environmentalist because an environmentalist believes that if only everyone cared as much about some romanticized notion of the colonized outdoors as they did, “we” would stop exploiting the “environment”.
An environmentalist cannot see that the climate crisis is not a lack of awareness by the many but an abuse of power by the few; yet an environmentalist blames the greed of the few on the individual shortcomings of the many.
As Michael Maniates writes in ”Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?”, “when responsibility for environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder institutions […] or the ways of collectively changing the distribution of power”.
Environmentalism is steeped in whiteness and the idea that climate change is the most important issue, the issue we can fix first and then address those other things like racism and sexism and homophobia, which have been happening forever anyway so just wait a bit longer okay? An environmentalist cannot understand that the only way we address the climate crisis is by addressing the legacy of imperialism and the white racial order. An environmentalist cannot draw a connection between polar bear habitat loss and Manuel Esteban Paez Terán’s murder in Atlanta’s Cop City.
In the depoliticization of environmentalism it has become universal, so universal that people like Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank can claim the label. Dimon states that “climate change and inequality are two of the critical issues of our time” while pouring billions into new fossil fuel infrastructure through Chase, against the absolute deadline imposed by science that we had to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure two years ago.
Recognize that any new infrastructure will be responsible for the avoidable loss of so many lives and livelihoods, and wonder whether we are really building this new infrastructure because of supposed individual shortcomings, or because all of our systems are set up to extract every last drop of carbon on this planet. Remember who benefits when the sky turns orange and soot chokes our lungs.
We cannot forget that we are the perpetrators of this climate crisis. I do not mean your styrofoam cup is causing the climate crisis. I mean that the institutions of the Global North that enable my livelihood and privilege, our systems of extraction and exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few, are also causing unimaginable suffering to people around the world whom I will never see and never know, the people who have done the least to cause this crisis.
If by declaring myself an environmentalist I forget that fact, then I am not an environmentalist.
Inspired by Jessa Crispin’s Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto
Nearly everyone in the Olin community supports environmental sustainability. A group coalesced, forming Olin Climate Justice (OCJ) to push environmental sustainability at Olin. Unfortunately, they’ve not only become ineffective, but actually counterproductive. We students have allowed them to become our voice. We’ve allowed them to be our exclusive ear. Our understanding of the Board’s actions and inactions come through them. Recently, I reached out to multiple Board members so I could better understand the situation.
OCJ demanded divestment of any Olin investments in climate unfriendly companies. OCJ claims it has exhausted its options for collaborating with the Board of Trustees and that the Board refuses to listen.
I learned that in OCJ’s persistence the Board agreed to reasonable stated goals of OCJ, provided numerous opportunities for listening and collaborating, and in fact has taken action to have more than a symbolic impact for climate justice.
I learned that OCJ asked for a committee within the board where students could surface environmental issues and the Board delivered. The issue isn’t the Board’s willingness to collaborate to find real impact, but that OCJ rejects anything other than divesting as “not collaborating.”
OCJ asked the Board in a 2022 publication to divest all direct holdings in fossil fuels within five years. They prompted alumni to petition for divestment from direct holdings. I learned that Olin had already divested from all direct holdings. Without acknowledging this, OCJ now presses to prevent possible indirect holdings by divesting from collective investment funds that may include indirect holdings.
I learned that the Board wants student input but cannot allow students to have unilateral control over Olin investments. OCJ has communicated to students that they ask to be heard about divestment, but they did not communicate that they also requested audit veto rights on any investment decision. This is different from asking to have input into endowment decisions. The Board is fiscally accountable for its investments and cannot set a precedent that would abdicate that responsibility to students.
I learned that the Board has conducted extensive research on the environmental impact of divestment; the data shows it has nearly 0 impact. In fact, divestment costs time and optionality.
I learned that the Board has successfully pursued Environmental, Social, and Governance investing (ESG), a form of sustainable, socially responsible investing. Like divestment, it makes a public statement, but arguably has optionality for longer lasting changes.
ESG enables new tactics, like ClientEarth is trying. As shareholders of Shell, ClientEarth has standing to file a lawsuit against Shell’s Board for failing to implement a Paris Agreement compliant energy transition strategy. Winning million dollar lawsuits against Shell has no impact (as OCJ has explained) but winning a million dollar lawsuit against individual board members would.
The board proposed alternative approaches with more promising impact than divestment and extended the opportunity for students to collaborate to find more effective solutions. The Board suggested shareholder resolutions and finding changes that the Olin community could make on campus – all of which have proven to have a larger environmental impact than divesting. OCJ has not reciprocated collaboration; they have only pressed for divestment.
I learned that Olin convinced the endowment’s investment firm, Summit Rock, to implement ESG. They adopted it for Olin’s investments, and offered it to other investors. The Board invited OCJ to participate in a recent Summit Rock presentation regarding how it implemented ESG. OCJ showed up but refused to discuss ESG, simply pressing Summit Rock to consider divestment instead until the meeting was ended due to lack of productive engagement. The Board asked OCJ to communicate with the student body to find students who would be interested in engaging with this idea; without asking the student body, OCJ communicated that no one was interested.
The Board welcomed students to meetings with investors, potential new board members, and other high stakes guests. The Board demonstrated trust and willingness to include students in their core work. OCJ refused to engage beyond demands for divestment. The Board was hopeful for collaboration but students who attended the meetings appeared disengaged, using their cell phones, taking private meeting notes and exhibiting disrespectful behaviors.
Recently, the Board didn’t object when OCJ entered their meeting chanting loudly. They listened while each student spoke. When the Board president asked if listening was a two way street, OCJ responded by blasting music. OCJ persisted with music and shouting, forcing the Board to adjourn.
Olin’s relationship with the Board is important. It’s part of establishing an integrated, supportive community with a greater collective influence. Beyond addressing OCJ, the Board has run events to connect with students and build community. OCJ should reflect and change course now so it can help build Olin’s capacity to impact environmental change rather than continuing self-righteous and arguably ineffective demands.
I, too, want real positive environmental impact. I’m not proud of OCJ’s tactics. OCJ hasn’t acknowledged positive actions Olin has taken, the level of divestment that already exists, or the proposed co-curricular to explore greater impact opportunities. OCJ has refused to engage beyond demands for divestment. Exclusively dictating divestment without entertaining additional options causes harm and will not positively impact the environment.
Students, I encourage you to truly understand what you are supporting. Help OCJ recenter themselves on fighting for climate justice and recognize and collaborate with our allies. The Board has demonstrated they want to be an ally and so should all of us, including OCJ.
Two weeks ago, at the Town Hall, we, the student body, made Olin history. At Olin’s first-ever social referendum, 93% of the student body voted “yes” to divest and disclose.
Are you in favor of calling on Olin to divest from fossil fuel companies and reinvest in sustainable businesses, industries, and funds?
Are you in favor of calling on Olin to disclose the endowment’s exposure to fossil fuel companies on a regular basis?
This town hall is the first time that we, the students, have collectively expressed our voice through a democratic process we designed. In a young, maturing institution, we are setting a precedent.
This is a monumental achievement. Many other colleges weren’t able to get above 80% support: at Harvard, for example, 72% of the student body voted for fossil fuel divestment back in 2013. Our vote demonstrates the overwhelming support of Olin students for this critical effort, and CORe will send an official recommendation to the Board of Trustees with these numbers that show our resounding consensus.
As Gilda announced on the day of the Town Hall, the Board has now formed a committee to discuss divestment. The student representatives for this committee—nominated by CORe—are Olivia Chang and Tyler Ewald, and the committee will be having its first meeting on December 13. This new committee is important progress towards divestment, and we are optimistic that it will spur both conversation and meaningful action: the committee is preparing a proposal for the Board to vote on during its February meeting.
We thank you – fellow Olin students – for your support. Your questions, your solidarity, and your demonstrated commitment to fighting the climate crisis are why divestment is moving forward. As members of the community, you have the unique privilege to shape how seriously our school takes our stated commitments to sustainability, equity, and justice. A lot of important work has been done in the past twenty years of our school, but more remains to be done.
We hope you join us in our efforts to move Olin towards a just and sustainable future. Climate justice can’t wait.
