Barnard College in New York City isn’t a religious school—unless you count the usual genuflections at the altars of diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and the like. Nonetheless, The Scrapbook is proud to bestow upon Barnard—with all due fanfare—the first-ever Weekly Standard St. Augustine Award for Virtue Postponed.
Early this month, Barnard’s board of trustees succumbed to student and faculty demands that the school divest from its $286 million endowment “fossil fuel companies that deny climate science or otherwise seek to thwart efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change.”
Just not quite yet.
The board’s task force on divestment had as one of its key findings: “A decision to divest must be balanced with the need to protect and grow the endowment.” The school’s chief operating officer, Robert Goldberg, told trustees before the vote that it would take time to sort through the details, because however much Barnard may want to sell those soiled energy stocks, “we don’t want to sell at a discount.”
Which is a shame, because if Barnard had just been willing to make its move a little quicker, it could have invested in celebrated Oakland-based solar energy company Sungevity. Alas, the green-tech darling just filed for bankruptcy. But goodness knows there are plenty of sustainable-energy plays that can be made by our friends, the savvy and moral investors of Barnard College. Yes, such as putting money into the environmentally friendly saltwater battery startup Aquion. They’ve raised some $190 million from investors such as Bill Gates and—what’s that? Oh. The Scrapbook regrets to announce that Aquion has also filed for bankruptcy.
So maybe the college is right to take its time with all that purity jazz. Which brings us back to St. Augustine. Eventually reformed and canonized for his piety, Augustine revealed in his Confessions that as a bawdy young man he would pray, “Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet.” Congratulations, Barnard!
