University President Morton Schapiro was re-elected to the Marsh & McLennan Company Board of Directors Thursday during the company’s Annual General Meeting.

Last week, students called upon Schapiro to leverage his influence on the board to ensure the company rules out working with Adani Carmichael — one of the largest proposed coal mines in the world. MMC, a global professional services firm, is currently brokering insurance for the Adani mine.

At Tuesday’s “Conversations with the President,” Schapiro defended his position on the board and stressed his belief that climate change is “the most important challenge facing humanity.” However, student activists and the Australian climate change activist movement #StopAdani took to Twitter to criticize Schapiro’s evasion of last week’s demands.

“His need to defend himself and clarify his and Northwestern’s commitments to sustainability clearly shows a lack of engagement with what folks are actually saying and asking of him,” read a tweet by Fossil Free NU. “We are focused on pressuring key figures like Morty, who as we said have ‘a crucial role and material power’ to make decisions that will bring about climate justice, in this case for the Indigenous Wangan and Jagalingou people.”

MMC also announced a new client engagement policy at Thursday’s meeting, which stated the company’s development of “procedures to bolster (its) commitment to Sustainable Development Goals.” These goals include, but are not limited to, access to reliable and sustainable energy supplies, climate change mitigation, resilience to climate-related natural disasters and the promotion of public-private partnerships to achieve those goals.

The policy, however, was criticized later that day by the #StopAdani campaign as “greenwash” — a term describing disinformation disseminated by an organization to present an environmentally responsible public image.

“This pathetic ‘policy’ was woefully inadequate and shows we have to keep pushing Marsh to take the climate crisis seriously and dump Adani,” read a tweet by #StopAdani.

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#StopAdani: Students ask Schapiro to leverage influence and abandon Australian coal mine insurance brokerage
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Letter to the Editor: Calling on President Schapiro to abandon the Adani Carmichael Coal Mine