Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Proponents of divestiture have always been frustrated in their efforts to try to sway the University In 1972. Harvard's primary governing board, the seven-member Corporation, created a student-faculty-alumni committee called the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) Some, however, have charged that the ACSR has had no influence on the Corporation, but has only deflected student from the board. In fact, it was massive student protests in 1978 that forced the only change in University policy on investments in South Africa. The Corporation said then that Harvard would divest from banks that lent money directly...
...middle of May the ACSR found itself repeating the same arguments and counter-argu- ments, with no one giving any ground. The Committee decided to send the CCSR a statement containing several recommendations concerning the South African issue, reflecting the diversity of views on the Committee...
...third recommendation, supported by half the Committee, was for total divestiture. Although the recommendation failed to garner the support of a majority of the ACSR, the fact that it had been voted on--this was the first time that the ACSR had considered such a motion--and that it received the support of alumni and Faculty members as well as students was in itself very significant...
...CCSR's response to the ACSR's recommendations proved to be a bitter disappointment to myself and the other student members on the Committee. The CCSR refused to commit itself to the exclusive use of the Sullivan Principles--or any other fixed or explicit set of principles--as the standard to rate corporate behavior. It acknowledged that indefinitely long dialogue with companies was "not a satisfactory course of action." Yet it avoided establishing any definite deadlines on such dialogue. In response to the ACSR's most minimal recommendation--for the use of ethical criteria in investment decisions--the CCSR indicated...
...much for the Harvard Corporation's concern for the burning moral issue of corporate involvement in South Africa. Before I began my own term on the ACSR, I tended to give the Corporation the benefit of the doubt when it came to the moral sincerity of its South African policy. When cynics suggested that the Corporation used the ACSR merely as a shield against student discontent I responded, with a Philosophy's concentrator's confidence in moral debate, that if the ACSR's facts and arguments were good enough they would have a significant effect on the Corporation's policy...