“Hijacking Our Universities”: New Reports Reveal How Big Oil Infiltrates US Higher Education

Students across six campuses expose research funding and other ties between their schools and the fossil fuel industry.

Columbia University. Credit: Ana Paula Hirama via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

New student-led investigative research has revealed extensive and concerning linkages between the fossil fuel industry and US universities, with six separate reports dropping yesterday detailing these ties across six university campuses. The reports expose the ways in which the industry is infiltrating universities through funding of academic research, sponsoring specific programs or initiatives and recruiting on campus, sitting on university boards, and other approaches that in many cases are not transparent.

Over $100 million in direct funding from the fossil fuel industry – coming from industry foundations or the companies themselves – was uncovered across the six universities, which include Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, American University, University of California San Diego, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Student researchers also identified more than 1,500 academic articles that disclosed funding from fossil fuel interests.

“We don’t want universities that are funded by the fossil fuel industry,” Maddie Young, research co-manager at Campus Climate Network (CCN), said during a September 18 virtual press conference titled “Big Oil’s Stain on our Universities” discussing the new reports. Campus Climate Network is a coalition of student-led climate justice groups pushing their universities to sever all ties with the fossil fuel industry. The organization, which formed in 2022 under the name Fossil Free Research, coordinated the new student research reports.

The six reports build upon previous student-led reports exposing fossil fuel industry ties to their universities, including at schools like Harvard, Duke, Dartmouth, University of Oxford, and University of British Columbia. These investigations and student campaigns are part of a broader effort to call out the fossil fuel industry’s influence and relationships with institutions of higher education, which have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

A 2017 article from climate disinformation scholars Benjamin Franta and Geoffrey Supran published in the Guardian warned that fossil fuel interests’ “invisible colonization” of academia is extensive and an under-recognized threat to addressing the climate crisis. In a landmark congressional report published in April titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change,” the industry’s leveraging of university partnerships and funding of academic research is highlighted as part of its sophisticated deception and greenwashing campaigns. The report reveals that just six fossil fuel companies including Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron invested at least $700 million into academic research programs between 2010 and 2020.

This is problematic, Supran said during Wednesday’s press conference, because “industry funding can and often does create conflicts of interest.” Supran, now an associate professor at the University of Miami and head of the Climate Accountability Lab, co-authored a new study published just last week in WIREs Climate Change examining the existing literature into fossil fuel industry ties in higher education. The study, thought to be the first comprehensive literature review on this subject, finds that it has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. “Universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry,” the study concludes. It warns that previous research into the influence of other industries in universities “suggests that the academic integrity of higher education is at risk.”

The bottom line is that fossil fuel industry influence and infiltration in academia is prevalent and pervasive. Why does this matter? Because it raises conflict of interest concerns that risk compromising or undermining research integrity and the reputations of universities. These ties also help bolster the industry’s social license. The relationships help legitimize the fossil fuel industry while subtly facilitating its ongoing climate obstructionism, which has shifted from outright climate denial to promoting “discourses of delay,” Supran and colleagues explain in their study.  

“Fossil fuel companies are hijacking our universities to perpetuate their own toxic industry,” Will Kattrup, research co-manager at Campus Climate Network and a student at Brown University, said during the press conference.

Here’s a closer look at some of the top findings from the six new student-written reports:

“Princeton’s actions concern me and concern many of my peers as students at the university. The institution where we go to learn to bring about a better future actively props up the industry that is destroying that future.” - Alex Norbrook, Princeton ‘26

American University

The Charles Koch Foundation has donated nearly $1.41 million to American from 2003 to 2023, student researchers find. And one university board member has some pretty explicit ties to Big Oil. AU Board of Trustees member Guardie Banister Jr. currently serves on the boards of fossil fuel pipeline company Enbridge and chemical giant Dow. He previously served on the board of Marathon Oil and held leadership positions at Shell, where he began his career. He also led an oil and gas company called Aera Energy, jointly owned by Shell and ExxonMobil. The AU report cites Banister as “an excellent example of how individual leaders within the [fossil fuel industry] can and do hold positions of influence in our higher education system.” The report also discusses grants and donations the university has received from foundations that fund climate denial organizations, as well as fossil fuel industry presence on campus through recruitment events.

Columbia University

The university took in $43.7 million from fossil fuel companies from 2005 to 2024, and over $15.7 million of that went towards Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. CGEP is partially funded by major oil and gas companies; “This financial relationship has been associated with a sentiment bias in Columbia’s climate research that aligned research outcomes with the interests of oil and gas donors,” the Columbia report explains. Student researchers from Sunrise Columbia also identified 784 university research studies with ties to fossil fuel funding. “It’s just unfathomable how deep these industry connections run,” said Columbia student Anika Kathuria, who co-authored the report.

Cornell University

Cornell has received more than $247,358,116 through grant funding and donations over the past 10 years from ten major foundations or companies that have close ties to fossil fuels. The Charles Koch Foundation has given over $3.5 million to Cornell, while Shell USA Company Foundation has donated $164,840 to the school between 2020 and 2022, according to the Cornell report. Furthermore, there have been 178 Cornell-affiliated research articles over the last 15 years with funding ties to fossil fuel interests, student researchers found. The report also spotlights industry ties on campus through recruitment events (highlighting five companies including ExxonMobil that have a large recruiting presence) and building names.

Princeton University

The fossil fuel industry has spent over $43 million on funding research through the university over the past 10 years. One program in particular, Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, has been funded by BP since its inception in 2000. “BP uses CMI to advance its communications campaign to promote natural gas, boost its credibility as a supposed climate leader, and influence policy at the highest level,” according to the Princeton report, which also identifies 210 research papers from Princeton that were funded by fossil fuel interests in the last five years. Moreover, the university even appears to own a fossil fuel company called Petrotiger. And while Princeton has announced a commitment to dissociate or cut research ties with some fossil fuel companies, student researchers say it does not go far enough.

“Princeton’s claim that it is a climate leader is false,” Princeton student Alex Norbrook, who co-authored the Princeton report, said at the press conference. “Princeton’s actions concern me and concern many of my peers as students at the university. The institution where we go to learn to bring about a better future actively props up the industry that is destroying that future.”

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

UNC has received nearly $12 million (from 2013-2023) from foundations tied to the fossil fuel industry, and that total rises to over $20 million when including donations from organizations known to fund climate denial and disinformation. Furthermore, at least 82 UNC-affiliated research articles published since 2012 have been funded by fossil fuel interests; top funders of this research include Koch Family Foundations, BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell, the UNC report reveals.

UC San Diego

The university has received more than $82.4 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and enablers since 2003, and at least 296 university-affiliated research articles since 2008 have been funded by the industry. The school’s renowned climate research institute, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, has a $3 million research agreement with BP for technology to explore offshore hydrocarbon reserves. Scripps also hosts a consortium that helps advance offshore hydrocarbon exploration, and Shell has paid $15,000 annually from 2005-2008, 2011-2014, and 2020-2021 to be part of the consortium. “UCSD’s values, as advertised to the public and to its student body, and its commitment to climate advocacy are largely compromised by its financial and social ties to the fossil fuel industry,” the UCSD report argues.

Time to Cut Ties

Students at these universities are calling on their schools to commit to full dissociation from the fossil fuel industry, increased transparency about these relationships, and to champion true university climate research untethered from industry influence or affiliation.

“It’s time for our universities to become real climate leaders and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry once and for all,” Young said. “These student-written reports are only the beginning – we have a strong, national student movement that will continue to expose and cut the ties with Big Oil.”