Critical Students of the Wageningen University & Research Centre (WUR) engaged their new president, Louise Fresco, in a dialogue regarding her views on the future of the university, among other topics.

Of course, we as FossilFreeWageningen students were also present and used this opportunity to gather attention for the FossilFree cause! We did this through a ‘mic-check’ action involving about 15 other students and by offering Fresco two books: Naomi Klein’s new book ‘This Changes Everything’ as well as Jeremy Leggett’s book ‘The Energy of Nations’. This was to congratulate her and the WUR on the fact that they have no direct investments in fossil fuels. However, the WUR does indirectly support the fossil fuel industry through their banks and pension funds. Therefore we pointed this out to Fresco and implored her to engage us in further talks to find how the WUR can become completely divested and declare itself a FossilFree university.

We are happy to announce that Fresco’s reaction was overall very positive and that she was certainly in agreement with the statement that we should all be doing more to mitigate climate change. Although she was not so much in agreement with the contents of Klein’s book, she did agree that the FossilFree strategy was a good strategy that deserves further investigation on her part.

By: Kris Deveria