“Shell operates outside ethical frameworks“
Academic freedom is never absolute but is rather embedded in ethical and legal frameworks. This is precisely why the collaboration with Shell must stop, argue students Carlos van Eck and Noah Pellikaan on behalf of several activist organizations.
It is beyond dispute that academic freedom is at the foundation of sound research at our universities. Teachers and researchers at the university should enjoy a very high degree of freedom in conducting and publishing academic research. But as the authors of an open letter on this subject recently pointed out, academic freedom is never absolute. ‘Within applicable ethical and legal frameworks, scientists choose the appropriate projects and partnerships to achieve their research ambitions’, they write.
Complicit
But that is exactly what the halt on further collaboration serves: a major reassessment of ethical frameworks. Shell, one of the biggest polluters on earth, is no longer the kind of company that is welcome at our university. It is a company complicit in a laundry list of crimes, such as in the Niger Delta where it collaborated with violent militias to suppress democratic movements in the country. As the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) put it in a recent report, ‘scientists must always strike the right balance between academic freedom and independence on the one hand and their social responsibility on the other.’
Such considerations are not at odds with academic freedom but are part of a balanced interpretation of it. Recalibrating ethical frameworks is therefore not new in academia: in 2018, Utrecht University renounced tobacco industry funding for a study on (cigarette) smuggling, and in 2022, the Free University suspended a research centre when it turned out that human rights violators were funding it for human rights research. Why should Shell be an exception to this?
Threat
We can also turn it around. It is precisely the collaboration with powerful companies like this that threatens academic freedom. In a 2018 advisory report on the freedom to practice science, the KNAW concluded that academic freedom is indeed under pressure, but mainly due to the underfunding of basic research and government-stimulated, if not enforced, cooperation between universities and business. Thus, to guard academic freedom, it is urgent to break the dependence on these (powerful) companies.
Unreliable partner
According to the authors of the open letter, Shell is an indispensable partner in the fastest possible energy transition. We depend on Shell, they claim, not only on their capital but precisely on their knowledge of scaling up and logistics of energy technology. But there are good grounds to distrust Shell as a suitable partner: Shell’s course is largely determined by shareholders who are only out for short-term profits.
Shell has huge assets in fossil fuels. More than 90 percent of its current investments still go to expanding the fossil industry. With a rapid (and affordable) energy transition, Shell would suffer gigantic losses, which would not be in the interest of shareholders.
The company has demonstrated in the past that it is out for short-term profits at all costs. Shell has known since the 1980s what devastating effects their operations would have for our planet. But the company wilfully kept this hidden for as long as possible. With gigantic lobbying budgets, it spent 40 years mischaracterizing science and democracy, aiming to block and delay climate policies just to deliver more returns for their shareholders. Little has changed since the 1980s: as recently as 2020, most top managers of Shell’s renewable division stepped down because they lacked confidence that the company was serious about a transition.
Working with Shell and the rest of the fossil industry increases their finger in the pie of the energy transition. Shell has shown time and again that it abuses its position in the energy transition to delay climate policy. There is a reason that the company is a champion of greenwashing; it needs a green image to disrupt the policy process with its mega lobby. Through cooperation with universities, Shell is offered legitimacy.
Patent
Besides, through collaboration with universities, Shell may have easy access to patents on discoveries made at the university. ‘Patents are an important means of exclusively protecting knowledge and thus giving Shell a technological edge over competing market players’, NWO states on its website. This would allow Shell to keep new green companies off the market. The result would be a delay in the transition and energy entering the market at a more expensive price. Research results should be made readily and publicly available so that the transition is swift, fair, and transparent.
University collaboration with Shell means that we contribute to maintaining and increasing the company's knowledge infrastructure: a network of people, knowledge and capital specialized in scale-up and logistics. Collaboration also increases our dependence on an actor with an interest diametrically opposed to our own.
Climate Justice
Not only do we want a rapid energy transition, but we also want an inclusive, social, and just world for all. An energy transition headed by big business is not going to lead to widely accessible renewable energy but will only contribute to sustaining a global economy based on the exploitation of people, animals, nature, the environment and the climate. We do not seek a solution only for the middle class in the global north. We demand climate justice for all.
Noah Pellikaan is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science, Carlos van Eck a master’s degree in military history. They wrote this contribution on behalf of a coalition of eight activist organizations, namely: Activist Party UvA; UvA Rebellion, Decolonization Club, Mokum Kraakt, Students for Justice in Palestine, Autonomous Student Struggle, End Fossil Occupy! and Red Socialist Youth. They occupied the premises of the former Amsterdam Academic Club on January 16.
