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by Daniel Vos Deputy News Editor
Students gathered outside of the Mayer Campus Center on March 3, before the Global Climate Strike in Boston, to protest Tufts’ fossil fuel investments and rising global carbon emissions. Rachel Kyte, dean of The Fletcher School, spoke at the rally, offering support to protesters calling for divestment.
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versity to follow other universities around this issue. … This investment is not going to produce the kinds of equitable growth that we need going forward,” she said. “People are going to lose money. And the people who will lose money at the end of the day will normally be the taxpayers who will suffer as a result of public bailouts of private institutions that will ask for help.”
The Inflation Reduction Act is an important move forward. It’s not everything, we need much more than that. And you need to keep the pressure up in solidarity with people like you in every corner of the world. Because this has to work for everybody. There is no way we succeed in making this transition with just the 1% ending up better off than they were before.”
Originally published March 7 AARON GRUEN / THE TUFTS DAILY Tufts Climate Action rallies at the Mayer Campus Center on March 3.
Kyte described a dark future for institutions tied to fossil fuel finance. She highlighted growing pressure on the university to ban such investments, of which Tufts currently holds an estimated $90 million.
“I’m glad that you are going to put pressure on this uni -
Her speech centered on fighting the climate emergency at every level of society. She called on governments, universities and students to reevaluate their role in the crisis and become leaders for change.
“We have a governor [of Massachusetts] and a mayor of Boston now fully aligned,” Kyte said. “You need to keep the pressure up domestically.
Artem Dinh, a Ukrainian and Vietnamese senior at Tufts, spoke to protesters about the influence of petropolitics in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, condemning European countries for purchasing gas from Russia and, as a result, perpetually funding Russian aggression.
