Word: acsr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Students who forced the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) to hold an open meeting on April 19th last year need to follow up that and other efforts to force Harvard to withdraw its investments in companies that operate in South Africa. The call for a boycott of the ACSR is especially timely...
...first place, last spring the ACSR voted to a deadlock of 6 to 6 on the question of total divestment. The ACSR's internal division is a good excuse for the Harvard Corporation to ignore the ACSR. Pragmatically speaking, further efforts in such a deadlocked situation are futile. The 12-member ACSR is appointed by president Bok--four students, four faculty and four alumni...
...second point about last spring is that the ACSR did vote for divestiture from companies that do not abide by the Sullivan Principles, a minimal code of ethics for firms doing business in South Africa. According to ACSR representative Claude Convisser '84, the vote was 12-0, not 10-2 as reported in the Gazette. Still, Harvard did not divest from companies that have not signed the cosmetic Sullivan Principles, so that even if the ACSR were to gain agreement on the more significant issue of total divestiture it is unlikely that this would work to make the Corporation divest...
Indeed, Bok's intransigence is the reason that the ACSR had to even vote on the Sullivan Principles. By March 24, 1978, a few months after Reverend Sullivan formulated his code of "ethics" for business in South Africa, the ACSR had already recommended Harvard's enforcement of the Sullivan Principles. On page seven of his open letter of April 1978, Derek Bok said the Harvard Corporation would uphold the Sullivan Principles as recommended by the ACSR. The reason that the ACSR had to make that same recommendation again in 1983 is that Derek Bok had lied. The Harvard Corporation never...
Briefly, the role of the ACSR delegate is to be appointed by the Corporation; to engage in secret meetings; to vote for the first time on total divestiture in 1983; to be deadlocked; to be manipulated by Derek Bok; and to make recommendations concerning the Sullivan Principles--recommendations ignored by a crafty Corporation that always hopes to ride out harmless candlelight marches. Practically speaking, the ACSR is a cooptation of the anti-apartheid movement...