In September 2011, faculty at the Brown School of Public Health decided that enough was enough: The manipulative tobacco industry would be banned from funding faculty research. For decades, Big Tobacco had backed biased research to support its deadly agenda, threatening academic integrity and creating serious ethical concerns. And so through a unanimous faculty vote, the school approved a tobacco-free research policy.
On Oct. 31, the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management, commonly referred to as ACURM, recommended that Brown faculty take a parallel vote on research funding from another destructive industry: fossil fuels.
Yet if you only read President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20’s response letter, published that same day in Today@Brown, you’d get a different story. ACURM’s report warned that fossil fuel industry funding infringed on academic freedom and, in addition to several other recommendations, proposed a faculty vote on the issue. Meanwhile, Paxson skipped over the nuances of the report, writing that the committee simply “did not recommend in favor of this request.”
Together ACURM’s report and Paxson’s response make it clear that academic freedom is not only under threat from fossil fuel industry funding, but from an active opposition to faculty governance.
Just as with Big Tobacco, funding from Big Oil threatens researchers’ ability to pursue academic inquiry free of external influence. Since the 1970s, the fossil fuel industry has specifically targeted academia to advance and legitimize their destructive practices. As ACURM’s recommendation states, “such influence … can shape research agendas, methodologies and outcomes in ways that align with the interests of the funders rather than the pursuit of unbiased knowledge.”
Citing the American Association of University Professors, ACURM outlines two key principles of academic freedom: free inquiry and independent faculty self-governance. Professors must be free to work without conflicts of interest and they must be able to govern themselves in matters relating to their teaching and research.
ACURM made it clear that Brown must act. Staying true to the principle of “independent faculty self-governance,” ACURM states that it “cannot recommend that the Corporation and thus the Administration implement a dissociation from fossil fuel industry sponsored research without a vote of the Brown faculty.” The integrity of faculty research is, after all, an issue that concerns the faculty.
Faculty are fully capable of making this decision through democratic processes. The unanimous School of Public Health vote on tobacco funding came after similar votes from peer institutions including the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of California at San Francisco. These votes happened in a wave of institutional efforts to disaffiliate from the industry. President Paxson claims that a similar vote on fossil-free research would “create a precedent for subverting established governance via ACURM.” But ACURM is advisory in nature. It is fully within its right to prescribe a decision-making process that centers faculty on an issue of academic freedom.
In her response to ACURM, Paxson assures us that faculty input in research funding policy is codified through the Gifts and Grants Review Committee. But the committee has not met since it was created in March. Before then, when it served as an ad hoc committee for 14 months, it only reviewed a single grant. Furthermore, even if the committee flags a grant for infringement upon academic freedom, they may only suggest the gift’s rejection — there is no actual demonstration of shared governance on this issue. ACURM references the committee in a complementary recommendation, making it clear that any change to the committee is not a replacement for a faculty decision on the issue.
So, when President Paxson rejects ACURM’s complete recommendation while pointing to the GGRC, she is rejecting a proposal that promotes shared governance while upholding a status quo that disempowers faculty. By asserting that it is “unclear” why a faculty vote on this matter is necessary, she further delegitimizes her own advisory committee and threatens the academic freedom of all Brown community members. Shared governance is under attack — a faculty vote presents the opportunity to chart a new path forward.
Beyond Brown, the movement to kick Big Oil off campuses is growing. Two weeks ago, the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment announced it would cut all financial ties with fossil fuel companies. A month prior, students from six U.S. universities, including Columbia, Princeton and Cornell, published analyses of fossil fuel industry research at their institutions. Collectively, they found that the six schools together have accepted over $100 million in fossil fuel industry-related funding and have published a collective 1,507 academic articles funded by oil and gas interests. In the coming years, pressure for institutions of higher education to dissociate from fossil fuels will only continue to intensify.
ACURM’s report presents an opportunity for Brown to be a leader on this issue. Students at Brown have been at the forefront of the fossil fuel dissociation movement for the past two years. In February 2023, the Dissociate Now report, written by Sunrise’s chapter at Brown, uncovered that Brown-affiliated researchers published 63 journal articles funded by fossil fuel companies and foundations from 2010 to 2022. That same semester, 1200 students signed a petition in favor of a fossil-free research policy. ACURM’s recommendation is the result of comprehensive research, conversations with impacted Brown community members and careful deliberation in the one and a half years since then. Now, the decision ought to rest in the hands of the faculty.
The Brown community is ready for a community decision on this issue, and a faculty vote presents a clear path forward. To protect academic freedom and affirm their right to self-governance, the faculty must vote on fossil-free research.
