Elite US universities rake in millions from big oil donations, research finds

Prestigious US universities are raking in millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. And one university even appears to have owned a petroleum company from which it has earned millions of dollars, according to a spate of new reports produced by student organizers.

The six analyses, released Wednesday, focus on American University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of California, San Diego. They were written by campus organizers at each respective institution and released by Campus Climate Network, an international student-led coalition that is pushing colleges to cut ties with big oil.

“Fossil fuel companies are hijacking our universities to perpetuate their own toxic industry, and we students are not having it anymore,” Will Kattrup, a research lead at Campus Climate Network, said on Wednesday.

The researchers scraped tax forms for publicly disclosed donations to universities from oil companies’ charitable arms, scoured schools’ boards for names linked to fossil fuel interests and tracked conflict of interest statements in published academic articles to document fossil fuel funding. Students from public universities also filed public information requests to obtain additional financial information.

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