“There may not be a university whose actions, at least in this realm, are as potentially influential as Harvard’s,” Recht said. “With power comes responsibility. It’s hard to predict, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate [divestment’s] potential effects.

Recht, along with History professor Joyce E. Chaplin, English and Comparative Literature professor James T. Engell '73 , and Classics professor Richard F. Thomas, all members of the Faculty of Art and Sciences, had been collaborating for about two months to collect signatures, mostly from faculty members who had already expressed their support in an online petition created by Divest Harvard—a student activist organization that calls for University fossil fuel divestment—according to Recht.

Shoshana Zuboff, a retired Business School professor and the only signatory representative of the Business School, said that the business model of fossil fuel companies is “unsustainable.

“On strictly business grounds, the era in which this kind of business model that externalizes these harms, in my view, that era is over,” Zuboff said. “The sooner firms reckon with that, come to grips with it, internalize it, and allow their business models and their conceptions of their businesses to evolve, the stronger those firms will be, the stronger our economies will be, and the stronger we’ll be.”

Other signatories include Kirkland House Master Tom C. Conley, History Department Chair David R. Armitage, and Director of the Harvard Forest David R. Foster. Every Harvard school except for the School of Dental Medicine was represented.

—Check TheCrimson.com for updates.

—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christine.cahill@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @cycahill16.

—Staff writer Amna H. Hashmi can be reached at amna.hashmi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @amna_hashmi.

—Staff writer Steven R. Watros can be reached at steven.watros@thecrimson.com. Follow him @SteveWatros.