President Gutmann,

We believe that profiting financially from tobacco companies is antithetical to Penn’s missions of education, research, and health. Tobacco represents one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced. Instead of addressing this problem, tobacco companies aggressively market their product to the most vulnerable children in the world. Knowing full well that their productive is addictive and responsible for 6,000,000 deaths world-wide each year, tobacco companies give free cigarettes and other branded products to children.

We are aware of your concern that the bar for divestment ought to be very high, reserving divestment actions for the most morally evil companies. But as has been well documented by the World Health Organization, tobacco companies have continued to act in reprehensible ways that are fundamentally opposed to our community values.