Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years as a graduate student representative to the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) has given me ample opportunity to observe the willingness of the Harvard Corporation to rise above principle when the occasion demands. I hope the following account will provide the Harvard community with greater insight into the politics behind the proposed change in University investment policy, and move some to make their opposition known at the ACSR open meeting scheduled for Thursday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Emerson...
...dismay, Harvard's commendable action received unexpectedly widespread press coverage and proved highly embarrassing to Citibank and the South African regime. Soon after, Citibank dispatched a representative to consult with the Corporation and lobby University officials to relax their present policy. The Corporation responded by applying pressure on the ACSR to approve the repeal of the 1978 concession, but the ACSR proved itself more than an ornamental rubber-stamp and voted down the proposal in May 1981. The ACSR majority concluded that the University had made a commitment and must honor...
...issue surfaced again in January of this year when the Corporation reintroduced the old proposal to a new and generally inexperienced ACSR. A Corporation official began the January meeting with a homily on the evils of apartheid and the great weight he placed on ethical criteria in investment policy. Then, almost as a casual afterthought, he asked the ACSR to rectify a "minor flaw" in the University's current bank policy which would force it to divest from banks trying to make "good loans" to the South African government. He gave as an example the Citibank loan which he claimed...
...Corporation representatives employed specious arguments and unscrupulous tactics in asking the ACSR to ratify a major policy departure presented in the guise of a minor modification, and without the benefit of a detailed discussion either within the ACSR or among the Harvard community as a whole. The proposed alteration was not a minor technical matter but the effective abrogation of the University's South African policy. Second, the Citibank loan was not solicited by South African Blacks. The Wall Street Journal of Sept. 26. 1980 quotes South African Finance Minister Owen Horwood, who was exultant over the case with which...
...Corporation's formal reform proposal contains a postscript noting that under the new guidelines, the Citibank loan would probably not be considered humanitarian. It should be emphasized that a sub-committee of the ACSR and not the Corporation reached this conclusion was directly contradicted by Corporation member Hugh Calkins '45 both in his much publicized letter to the ACSR where he claimed the Citibank loan served a "worthy purpose," and in a recent Harvard Crimsoninterview where he invoked the opinion of "some" Blacks to justify the loan. If the Corporation dares to mention the Citibank loan in the same breath...