To Divest, Or Not To Divest?

AT AT LEAST ONE major University in the United States, the students are urging the people who govern the university to divest the university of all stock related to fossil fuels. The powers that be are naturally quite reluctant to do this; fossil fuel stock is a good investment, and never let it be said that an American university passes up good investments. Most university students are liberal, most university faculty are liberal, but most college administrators are not quite as liberal. Fossil fuels may be destroying the planet, but their corporate stock is quite valuable, and likely to become more so in the future. Bear in mind that American universities are, in essence, profit seeking corporations. It seems likely that if large numbers of fossil fuel shareholders divest, most fossil fuel stock will end up in the hands of fewer people, exacerbating the concentration of wealth and power. Better perhaps that everyone own one, and only one, fossil fuel share, that corporate power might be diluted and diffused as much as possible, and the people in general would have corporate power and wealth.