Thursday, May 23, 2019

Dr. Peter Salovey
President of Yale University

Dear Dr. Salovey, 

We are writing to once again urge Yale to rescind its 1996 honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree awarded to Stephan Schmidheiny, owner of the global Eternit enterprise, in 1996.  Yale was clearly conned by this asbestos billionaire in his rebranding effort to avoid criminal prosecution in Italy. 

For over a century, asbestos exposure has been known to cause disease and deaths. Each year, nearly 40,000 Americans die from preventable asbestos-caused diseases, yet imports and use continues.

Today, a Turin criminal court pronounced Mr. Schmidheiny, a Swiss billionaire, guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to 4 years in prison.  Another trial has started in Naples charging Schmidheiny with murder.

There is well-documented evidence about Schmidheiny in the attached article “Criminality and Asbestos in Industry” about the training sessions he held for his managers to deal with concerns of workers, the media, and the public, as the lethality of asbestos was becoming more widely known in 1976.  Virtually nothing was done to protect the workers, their families, and community, to restrict the asbestos pollution in Italy.

We join Yale alumni, who have campaigned for 6 years, in asking Yale to revoke Schmidheiny’s honorary degree, under the principles adopted in renaming the building honoring slavery defender John C. Calhoun.

Yale should also follow the precedent created by rescinding the honorary degree the university awarded to sexual predator Bill Cosby, in doing the same regarding the shameful honor to Stephan Schmidheiny. Your action would send a clear signal that human rights violations will never be tolerated, let alone honored, by a distinguished university.

Thank you, 

Linda Reinstein, CEO/Co-Founder
Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO)