Stop Land Grabs: The Financialization of Farmland, the Rights of Rural Communities and University Endowments and Academic Retirements

Date: 

Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 11:00am to 1:00pm

Location: 

Robinson Hall, Warren Center Conf. Room (#B21), 35 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138

RSVP in person 
​​​​​​​tinyurl.com/LandSeminar 
​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​RSVP for Zoom
tinyurl.com/LandSeminarZoom 

​​​​​​​
The seminar will focus on the key role that Harvard University, through its endowment, and the retirement fund manager TIAA, which manages the retirement savings of university faculty and staff around the country, play in financial speculation on farmland in Brazil, the United States and other countries. This financial speculation on farmland is causing displacement of rural communities, human rights violations, and environmental destruction. 

These financial corporations promote the expansion of agribusiness plantations that demand large amounts of chemical inputs which are based on fossil fuels. The seminar will build outreach to pressure Harvard and TIAA to divest from farmland. It will be an opportunity for international organizing in defense of food sovereignty and land rights for Indigenous, small farmers and peasant communities. This event is part of the Workshop Slavery and its afterlives, from the Graduate Center of the History Department.


Maria Luisa Mendonca 
Network for Social Justice and Human Rights 

Devlin Kuyek 
GRAIN 

Dr. Sidney Chalhoub 
Harvard University

Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau 
Stop Land Grabs Coalition/ActionAid USA 

Altamiran Ribeiro - Pastoral Land Commission 
Piauf/Brazil 

Rachel Carle 
Stop Harvard Land Grabs 

flyer_final.pdf191 KB