XR Columbia University Declares Hunger Strike

NEW YORK, NY, 17 NOVEMBER 2019 - On Friday morning, Extinction Rebellion Columbia University delivered a letter, copied below, to the Office of the President, declaring its intention to enact a hunger strike unless certain actions are taken.

From November 18th to 22nd, a number of Columbia students will refuse food while following a thoroughly prepared vitamin and care regimen, unless the following conditions are met:

1. TELL THE TRUTH

The university must declare a climate and ecological emergency, acknowledging that its current plan is a lie of omission, eliding the hundreds of thousands already dead and the weight of the crises to come.

2. ACT NOW

The university must plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions–including complete divestment from fossil fuels–by 2025.

3. FORM A COMMUNITY ASSEMBLY

The university must create an assembly of community members, modeled on Citizens Assemblies, in order to deliver a binding resolution on the university’s path towards divestment and net-zero emissions.

4. ENACT A JUST TRANSITION

This assembly must include leaders from the surrounding communities and foreground the voices of frontline populations, in addition to representative numbers from all stakeholders within the University (staff, students, faculty, and administrators alike).

If at any point before or during the strike, the strikers believe that these conditions have been adequately and openly agreed to, the strike will end immediately. Extinction Rebellion Columbia University looks forward to congratulating the university on its leadership, and celebrating our strengthened institution. Below is a copy of the letter delivered to the Office of the President.

To the Trustees and President of Columbia University:

We are Extinction Rebellion Columbia University. We need to talk about divesting from fossil fuels. This is our question to you: at what point should knowledge translate to action? 

Columbia University is a university of global caliber, and one of the finest extant examples of what used to be called “the academy.” It’s an institution that was founded to prepare students for futures in which they could thrive, and to create new knowledge with the potential to revolutionize the world. 

But that knowledge will never change the world simply by existing. Publication can no longer be the ultimate goal of academic practice, and students who think otherwise are not prepared for the Anthropocene. Thus the academy is failing in its mission, because for too long, it has defined consciousness as an end in itself, and defined learning as separate from labor. Until the academy views action as a natural extension of learning, the academy will fail itself, denying students the tools to reshape their broken inheritance. And it will not be telling the truth.

The truth is that we are in a crisis of unprecedented scale, and if institutions like ours do not meaningfully mobilize against it, we are not just ethically negligent, we are failing in intellectual honesty. The truth is that our world is in the midst of a massive paradigm shift, and that our problems stem not from a lack of awareness, or knowledge, or engineered solutions, but a lack of will: the will to stare at the severity of the Anthropocene, and the will to structurally challenge the society that engineered it.

Like many, Extinction Rebellion Columbia University was hopeful about the formation of the Climate Change Task Force, but has been disappointed with it thus far. There is endless talk of thinking, of formulating, of envisioning--in short, there is endless talk of doing intellectual work that has already been done, projected through timescales that became irrelevant years ago. We cannot act without thinking carefully, but any effort at reorganizing Columbia that does not include immediate and profound change is a lie of omission, eliding the hundreds of thousands already dead and the weight of the crises to come. 

Trustees, President Bollinger; tell the truth as 11,000 scientists have: without massive and fast-paced radical change, ecological collapse will erase not just this institution, but societal structure, and the flourishing of human culture afforded by 10,000 years of unprecedented climatic stability. Tell us that our current “plan” is a condemnation of island nations, of thousands of species lost to extinction, and of the shreds of normalcy afforded to the young people of this new era. Tell us why Columbia’s $11,000,000,000 endowment continues to fund climate death through its investment in fossil fuels. 

In the most recent Climate Change Task Force Town Hall, Director Alex Halliday asked for student ideas and received many, few of which included proposals for more than conversation and thinking. Task Force member Dr. Robin Bell mentioned that the Task Force was struggling with the third part of its mission, the “action impact solutions.” When pressed for more information about these action impact solutions, the co-leaders had little to say, because the university still cannot imagine that its mission must extend beyond the shaping of consciousness and into the sphere of meaningful participation. We believe Halliday and Bell to be a good-faith actors. During the Town Hall, Halliday did address a good starting place for action: divestment from fossil fuels. He mentioned that many people in backchannel discussions have found divestment “extremely reasonable.”

We’re glad to share a vision with Dr. Halliday and the task force. We, too, think divestment is extremely reasonable. In fact, we think it’s an absolute necessity that is long overdue, especially given the increasing burden of evidence that fossil fuel companies have known about their industry’s death toll and nonetheless chosen to expand. 

We feel so strongly about the need for immediate divestment that in order to encourage the university, we are prepared to spend five days on hunger strike, sitting peacefully in public view from Monday to Friday, or until the university makes visible efforts towards action. We would rather not do this. It is extremely uncomfortable. We would much rather meet with university officials ahead of time, and congratulate the university on its concrete steps towards true carbon neutrality. Judith Butler writes, “the hunger strike is a bodily enactment, following its own protocols of performativity; it enacts what it seeks to show, and to resist.” The continued funding of ecological catastrophe is a negation of young bodies’ futures, and if the university cannot see these bodies’ hunger for life, we will enact it. We will resist a collective future defined by starvation.

We also feel that we cannot allow the other young people of this institution to continue looking to its leaders for change that is not yet coming. Therefore we ask that the university declare a climate emergency. We ask this alongside many other tireless student groups that recognize our current plan is not a plan at all, but a capitulation to a grotesque future.

Again, we do not want to do this. But if the university cannot yet see how to act, we will demonstrate, acting together with hundreds of other Extinction Rebellion hunger strikers around the world. We have learned from legacies of resistance, including those here at Columbia, and will use our privilege to refuse food as a small representation of the sacrifices to come.

Signed,

Extinction Rebellion Columbia University