05-22-07 by Simpson
Stanford University, beneficiary of $100 million from ExxonMobil for alternate energy research, is finally standing up to the oil giant and voting in favor of an environmentally friendly shareholder proposal at the annual meeting. Now the university needs to continue to act to restore its academic integrity.
Julie Sevrens Lyons reports what’s happened in today’s San Jose Mercury News under the headline "Stanford poised to buck big donor."
Though big cash for the school, the money is mere pocket change to Exxon. Last year it made $4.5 million an hour. Its annual funding over a decade for Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Program amounts to just two hours of profits.
Yet the firm has the unmitigated audacity to cite its association with Stanford’s GCEP as a reason to vote against the shareholders’ proposal. The resolution, Item 15 on the proxy statement, is sponsored by the Sisters of St. Dominic, a New Jersey order of nuns. It calls for the ExxonMobil board to set reductions in greenhouse gas emissions for both ExxonMobil products and operations and report back to shareholders on the progress.
I’m glad to see university officials doing the right thing with the resolution, but they’ve still got to face up to the damage the GCEP deal does to the university, its faculty and students. Right now it gives ultimate control of research to the corporate sponsors. The university doesn’t even have a vote on the GCEP management committee.
As demonstrated, ExxonMobil has no hesitation to use the deal for its own ends and agenda.
Stanford needs to renegotiate the GCEP deal to regain control and stop ExxonMobil from tarnishing its name.
And other universities like UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Iowa State, Georgia Tech, Princeton, University of Oklahoma and Duke need to ensure that oil deals at their institutions don’t make them mere extension campuses of "Big Oil U."