In an effort to pressure Harvard University to dump its fossil fuel stocks, a group of students has filed a suit against the president and fellows of Harvard College for "mismanagement of charitable funds," the New York Times reports.

On Wednesday, seven law students and undergraduates filed an eleven-page complaint, accompanied by a hundred and sixty-seven pages of supporting exhibits, with Suffolk County Superior Court in Massachusetts asking the court to compel the university to take action on behalf of its students and "future generations." The movement for fossil fuel divestment on college campuses began two years ago at Swarthmore College and has led some institutions, including Stanford University and Pitzer College, to adopt new investment policies. However, Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust argued in a 2013 statement that divesting the university's endowment of fossil fuels was neither "warranted [n]or wise," in part because the endowment "is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change." While Faust subsequently announced that Harvard would integrate "environmental, social, and governance factors" into its investment policies in ways that are "aligned with investors’ fiduciary duties," the shift in tone failed to placate many students.

According to the Times, the students' legal arguments are unusual, in that they accuse the school of "mismanagement of charitable funds" and, in another section, invoke a tort, "intentional investment in abnormally dangerous activities," that has no apparent precedent in law. While citing the school's original 1650 charter from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and state case law that allows those with a "special interest" in an organization to bring a claim with respect to mismanagement of  funds, the students acknowledge that they may need a sympathetic judge to find that they fit the legal definition of those having a "special interest." The students told the Times that they were inspired by John Bonifaz, a graduate of Harvard Law School who, with other students, sued the university in the 1990s over its law school's hiring practices. Although the suit was unsuccessful, it was widely considered to have influenced subsequent actions by the school to increase the diversity of its law school faculty. Bonifaz, a 1999 MacArthur Fellow who is co-founder and president of Free Speech for People, was quoted as saying the divestment group is making "a creative and powerful argument, and I think it can shift the overall debate. [They are] taking activism over divestment to another level by grounding it in a legal argument."

"We agree [the] threat must be confronted, but sometimes differ on the means," Harvard spokesperson Jeff Neal told the Times. "Harvard has been, and continues to be, focused on supporting the research and teaching that will ultimately create the solutions to [the climate change] challenge."