Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last year, I served as the undergraduate representative to the Advisors Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), a 12-member body composed equally of students, faculty, and alumni I had conducted some preliminary research of my own and supported the position that Harvard should divest from companies operating in the Republic of South Africa...
Membership on the ACSR not only afforded the opportunity to learn about the South Africa question and other ethical matters of relevance to the University as a stockholder, but also a chance to gain insight into the ways in which an influential institution reacts to an emotionally charged issue that poses a challenge to the very world view of the institution's chief officers. I am speaking of the dilemma that the seven Harvard Corporation members face in deciding how to handle the University's investments in companies doing business in South Africa...
...remainder of our meeting time, we tried to inform ourselves about various aspects of the South Africa issue. We looked into the social, economic, and political conditions in South Africa, the history of the ACSR's recommendations regarding South Africa-related stock and the Harvard Corporation's actions in response: the philosophical questions concerning both the proper role of the University as an ethical actor in society and the part foreign companies play in sustaining or changing apartheid: and the financial implications for the University of whatever policy it should choose to adopt in the future...
Part of the reason for this conviction is that the ACSR was roundly lambasted by several of the speakers for being a puppet of the Harvard Corporation. These student and alumni spokesmen asserted that the ACSR serves as a lighting rod to deflect criticism and protest from the real policy makers, the seven members of the Harvard Corporation, whom the ACSR is supposed to advise. These speakers contended further that the Corporation then proceeds to ignore practical: all of the ACSR's counsel regarding South Africa policy. One student went so far as to say that when examined in historical...
While I did not at the time and do not non-subscribe to the view that the ACSR is a puppet group. I believe that because of certain faults in the guidelines governing Committee members' selection and because of the nonuniform way in which these guidelines have been implemented, the Committee representativeness and integrity must be called into question...