HLS Section 7 Students Urge Professor Jody Freeman to Resign from ConocoPhillips Board

Update: Jody Freeman resigned from the board in August of 2023.

On April 11, 2023, twenty-four members of the Harvard Law School Class of 2025’s Section 7 sent a letter to Archibald Cox Professor of Law Jody Freeman, asking her to resign from the Board of Directors at ConocoPhillips.

In the letter, the students shared concerns about the environmental impact of ConocoPhillips’s fossil fuel endeavors, such as the Willow Project, and about the “impending assault on the administrative state” from the Supreme Court.

While expressing admiration for Prof. Freeman’s “proven dedication to achieving environmental justice,” the students concluded by asking her to “[s]ever [her] relationship with ConocoPhillips” and to “[d]onate [her] profits to organizations fighting for environmental justice for impacted communities.”

Reached for comment, Prof. Freeman provided the following response:

I respect my students enormously and appreciate their reaching out to me. As I told them, I would not serve as an independent board member if I didn’t think it would help advance the cause of fighting climate change and advance the clean energy transition. That imperative is at the core of all my work at Harvard and beyond. For me, change requires working from both the outside, and the inside. I’ve discussed my views on constructive engagement here and shared them with my students. In addition, I’ve issued a statement about my communication with my colleague John Coates on which there has been reporting. Thank you.

The letter in full, with signatories, is attached below.

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