Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Should the ACSR approve Stevens's proposal this fall, the Corporation will scale down its annual review of company practices in South Africa from 50--the number in which it holds investments--to about eight. Hugh Calkins '45, chairman of the Corporation's Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, said in the spring, "By reviewing the practices of only eight or ten companies each year on a rotating basis, Harvard could look more closely at these companies and be able to encourage reform from a well-informed perspective...
...opinion of Gordon D. Kaufman, Mallinckrodt Professor of Law and an ACSR member, is any indication, the other committee members will encores Stevens's plan. Because the ACSR had investigated a company only at the request of another shareholder, "last year's system left us in the position where we ended up voting yes or no on proposals that we felt should have different wording or different emphasis. We were simply in the position of reacting to other people's work," Kaufman says...
...with a small, set agenda, the ACSR may be able to make proposals of its own. "There is the chance," says Detlev F. Vagts '49, professor of Law and former ACSR chairman, "that if they stick to their agenda, the ACSR might hit upon a company with beastly practices that no one has ever looked into before. And that would put the Corporation in the position of initiating shareholder resolutions...
...Corporation is trying only to make the ACSR credible, but those efforts may force the Corporation to commit itself to looking into shareholder resolution, and Jorge I. Dominguez, professor of Government and a former committee member, anticipates trouble if the Corporation stumbles into such a role. "I'm sure that's a bridge no one will cross until they come to it," he says. Although the eight-companies-a-year plan is still a proposal, it seems likely to pass. And committee members say it is likely that the early investigations will include familiar trouble spots--companies under scrutiny because...
Citing the University's continuing commitment to checking South African investments, Stevens is optimistic about the new plan. Under the old policy, he says, "you ended up knowing a little bit about a lot of companies." But Vagts is more cautious. He hints at differences that linger between the ACSR and the Corporation, and says that although the information about certain companies may be more comprehensive a sense of investment trends will be lost...