Following a student activism campaign, Columbia University says it will divest itself from about $10 million in stock in private prisons. College divestment campaigns may be mostly symbolic, but at least their symbolism is on the right side of good and evil.

Seven student activists are suing Harvard University to try to force the school to divest from fossil fuels, citing among other things the risk of "future damage to the university's physical campus as a result of sea level rise."

The University of California is the latest major university to find itself arguing over whether or not divestment from fossil fuels is a worthwhile idea. Is it? Yes. But it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, either way.

Yesterday, Walmart announced weak earnings in the past quarter. The company blamed the weather. It might do better to blame itself. Walmart's reputation is now so toxic that a major American city is purging itself of investments in the company.

Stanford University has announced that it will divest its endowment funds of coal company stocks, which has the twin benefits of making a powerful statement on behalf of the environment and making Harvard look like timid little scrubs.

There has been a growing movement of late to push colleges and universities to get rid of all their investments in fossil fuels, in the same way they were pushed to divest from holdings in apartheid South Africa a generation ago. Harvard has answered: no thx.

College endowments are much flashier than they used to be. They frequently reach into the billions of dollars; they attract top investing talent; and, most notably, the majority of their money is in "alternative" investments like private equity and hedge funds. Is this hurting students' ability to be proper idealists?

The precocious and progressive young students of Swarthmore College are currently urging their school to completely rid itself of any investments in fossil fuels. The school pointed out that this move could potentially raise each student's tuition costs by $13,000 per year. Is there any way to make divestment work?