Word: acsr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
About 30 students picketed the meeting of the Advisory Committee on shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) for the second consecutive week yesterday, urging divestiture of Harvard holdings in banks that extend credit to the South African government...
...ACSR is only an advisory board, recommending policy to the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, which tells Harvard Management Company, an investment firm set up in 1974 to control 90 per cent of the portfolio, what to do about Harvard's investments. The Corporation accepts about 90 per cent of the ACSR's recommendations, but on sensitive issues the Corporation has a nasty habit of abstaining on shareholder resolutions if the vote of the ACSR on what policy to recommend isn't lopsided--no clear mandate, you see. But even when the Corporation does accept the ACSR's advice...
This underlying tendency towards amoral investment policy is heightened by the ACSR's decision to restrict the Harvard community's access to investment decisions. The ACSR operates in a shroud of secrecy, and gives the same reason so many other Harvard institutions do as a justification--if the meetings were public, people would not be free to speak their minds and play devil's advocate on issues so the committee can consider all possible viewpoints. This defense of secrecy is simplistic--all too often the purpose of secret deliberations is to protect from the public's rightful wrath ACSR members...
Still, the ACSR's performance this year surpasses its behavior last year, when the combination of even more secrecy in its operations plus bureaucratic ineptitude made a joke of the idea of the ACSR serving to monitor, distill, and relay to the Corporation University sentiment on investment decisions. The ACSR has analyzed the issue of Harvard's involvement in companies with links to South Africa much more thoroughly this year, and has held an open hearing to allow interested observers to present their viewpoints to the committee...
...ACSR has given some indications that it will recommend an investment policy this year which will be significantly less kindly to companies upholding apartheid. The Committee has not made that decision yet, though there have been advance signs that the ACSR has already ruled out some of the more far-reaching possibilities, like divestiture of stock in offending companies, and it is always possible, though highly doubtful, that it will recommend a socially progressive investment policy to the Corporation. It is too early to damn the ACSR for a decision it has not yet made, but at times it seems...