All Posts Tagged With: "ethical investments"

Prof. Pettigrew on why universities can’t divest

Fort McMurray, Alta. oilsands (eryn.rickard/Flickr)

Here, Cape Breton University Professor Todd Pettigrew argues that divesting from “unethical” companies isn’t as easy as activists make it sound. After reading his commentary, check out Torrance Coste’s argument in favour of divestment.

I served, for a brief time, on the Board of Governors of Cape Breton University, and one thing I did during that period was speak in favour of looking into ethical investments. After all, we know from the proverbs that money talks.  So if we are talking with our money, why not have it say something important?

Ethical investing, I argued at the time, seemed all the more urgent in the context of university education. If we are trying to teach our students to think critically, shouldn’t we ask tough questions about scholarship endowments and pension funds? Should we give scholarship funds to a student studying, let’s say, social justice, and then tell that student not to worry where that money came from?

Continue reading Ethical investing isn’t as easy as it sounds