Word: acsr
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...debate over the Sullivan Principles raged again this year when members of the ACSR learned that the Corporation had invested in companies without checking if they had signed the Sullivan Principles. Concern over the University's commitment to its previously expressed policy was compounded soon thereafter by a public statement by Hugh Calkins '45, chairman of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. Calkins said that it simply was not financially feasible for the Corporation to investigate a company's practices until after Harvard had already invested in the company...
Confronted with this statement, members of the ACSR attempted to formulate new resolutions that would somehow ensure that the University did not end up purchasing stock in companies that do not meet minimum standards of conduct in their South African operations. Committee members unanimously supported a recommendation advising the Corporation to prescreen all companies. The ACSR also recommended that the University use the Sullivan Principles as the bare minimum requirement for investing in a company, and that it sell its stock in any company that fails to meet these minimum standards. This term's actions culminated with the unprecedented...
...response to this recent spate of ACSR votes, Calkins announced late last month that the Corporation would begin investigating the possibilities of prescreening companies. Earlier in the spring, however, Bok reaffirmed his 1978 South African statement that Harvard does not consider divestiture an effective way of expressing disapproval of the apartheid regime...
...ACSR members had varying reaction to Calkins's statement. Alumni member George M. Dallas '56 says he is pleased with the Corporation's willingness to consider changing its current policy, adding that the ACSR should now wait to hear what the Corporation decides before resuming a discussion of the South Africa question. But Jonathan Cedarbaum '83, this year's undergraduate member, says that Calkins's statement merely shows how wide the gap is "between the Corporation's rhetoric and both its actual concern and practice" for the plight of Black South Africans. His term on the ACSR revealed...
More than any other point in its history, members of the ACSR now seem to sharply differ with the Corporation on how it can be most effective. All the committee members say that the ACSR has been most useful when it has made broad policy statements. Yet Calkins says that while these broad statements are valuable contributions to the general discussion, recommendations on individual shareholder resolutions should continue to be the ACSR's major charge...