Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...several hundred million dollars in dozens of corporations, Harvard must contend with a plethora of resolutions each year. This year, for example, the Corporation will consider 40 shareholder resolutions in more than 20 corporations. Before the Corporation votes on the resolutions, however, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) considers each resolution and advises the Corporation how to vote. The ACSR will spend the next month discussing resolutions...
Before Bok established the ACSR, the Harvard treasurer decided how to vote the proxies. Before shareholder activism kicked up, this posed few problems. But in the early '70s, as the number of resolutions rose, then-Treasurer George F. Bennett '33 continued to routinely throw out the proxy statements, or vote with management. The University had no way to collect information on resolutions and make responsible decisions...
President Bok established the ACSR in 1972 to advise the Corporation on shareholder resolutions and on the general social and ethical responsibilities it faces as a shareholder. The Corporation follows the ACSR's recommendations 85 to 90 per cent of the time, according to Lawrence F. Stevens '65, secretary of the ACSR. By the time the ACSR germinated, the university had already spent several years wrestling with its relationship with the corporate world...
Since 1972, the ACSR has had the responsibility of seeing that Harvard invests its money and votes its proxies. Stevens says "The very fact that this is a public community process is already a position by the Corporation on behalf of its responsibility as a shareholder." But whether the process is a strong enough statement of Harvard's social responsibility is a matter of controversy, especially when it comes to the question of investments in corporations doing business in South Africa...
...Tony and I feel we should try to work from within the ACSR," Low said yesterday. "If the reforms were defeated that would prove that working from within is useless and we would have the public relations advantage of proving the non-representativeness of ACSR," he added...