Fossil-Funded Affiliate Programs Renege on Transparency Promise

Dear Coalition Supporters, 

Welcome to the new year! We are planning for an active winter quarter, continuing to push the Doerr School of “Sustainability” to live up to its name. 

Late last quarter, in response to pressure from us, the affiliate programs finally publicly released funding totals along with a promise that “We will update this website to include individual corporate contributions and the titles of all the projects that these affiliates fund before the end of fall quarter” (see archived webpage here). Transparency is insufficient, as we have long argued, but it is a step in the right direction. 

However, the end of fall quarter came and went with no further release of data, and the above sentence promising this data has since been deleted from the website (see current webpage here). 

We’d like to give the affiliate program directors the benefit of the doubt — we’re all overwhelmed these days and getting these data together may take time — but this is harder to do since they no longer profess the intention of releasing more data. If there is nothing to hide, why not open the books? 

We will keep pushing to get more transparency and, ultimately, dissociation from fossil fuel companies. Let’s turn the Doerr School from a foot-dragging embarrassment mocked by cleantech enthusiasts and big-name directors into a forward-thinking sustainability institution pushing others to follow its lead. Stay tuned.