Harry Smith interviews Harold Hamm. Photo by Dan L Vander Beek for Central College
Central’s Harry Smith interviews Harold Hamm on Central College’s
campus. Photo by Dan L Vander Beek for Central College.

One of the oil and gas industries’ top executives made a visit to Central College Thursday.
CEO of Continental Resources Harold Hamm was invited to campus by Board of Trustees Member Harry Smith. Hamm met with students and members of Vermeer Corporation prior to his program with Smith at the Graham Conference Center.
Hamm says he discussed his passion for the industry with the students he met.
“I just explained to the students that John Franks came to my high school and talked and lit a passion for the industry I’m in,” Hamm said. “He talked about how you do better being involved in something you like to do and that you care about and are passionate about.”
A group of faculty and students protested, including Professor Jim Zaffiro, who says Hamm’s visit was in direct conflict with Central’s sustainability efforts.
“We have a hard time of squaring Mr. Hamm’s visit with the sustainability mission of our college. We also have a hard time with his particular kind of entrepreneurship. We think the sacrifices of this kind of profit are a little too great: the social, environmental sacrifices and the people being sacrificed,” Zaffiro said.
Board of Trustees Member Harry Smith says he met Hamm while reporting on a story about the oil boom almost four years ago, and extended the invitation for a visit to Pella. Smith says that he understands the controversy surrounding Hamm’s invitation to campus due to Central’s sustainability efforts, but counters that the U.S. economy would be very different without the efforts Hamm and others in the gas and oil industry.
“If you think about it–especially oil geopolitically–if we can produce more of our own oil and be less dependent on exports from the middle east, there is really something about sustainability in that,” Smith says. “It doesn’t fit the sort of accepted definition of sustainability, from the terms of using less energy. But we are still an economy that uses a lot of energy.”
Smith says Hamm’s discoveries in North Dakota were important in an economy that’s reliant on fossil fuels.
“When this is done responsibly, and when best practices are used, I think it’s a win for us,” he says. “From that perspective, we have these LEED buildings and sustainability buildings, and I think all of that it’s good that we are part of that as an institution, but somethings these things are a little more nuanced, and Harold, I would say, brings some nuance to the conversation.”
At the event itself, Hamm responded to questions from the students and faculty about environmental concerns, the ethical implications for workers, the safety of fracking, and ethanol.