Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agenda

Abstract

The evolution of fossil fuel industry tactics for obstructing climate action, from outright denial of climate change to more subtle techniques of delay, is under growing scrutiny. One key site of ongoing climate obstructionism identified by researchers, journalists, and advocates is higher education. Scholars have exhaustively documented how industry-sponsored academic research tends to bias scholarship in favor of tobacco, pharmaceutical, food, sugar, lead, and other industries, but the contemporary influence of fossil fuel interests on higher education has received relatively little academic attention. We report the first literature review of academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel industry ties to higher education in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, and that universities' lack of transparency about their partnerships with this industry poses a challenge to empirical research. We propose a research agenda of topical and methodological directions for future analyses of the prevalence and consequences of fossil fuel industry–university partnerships, and responses to them.