Word: action
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Action from principle--the perception and the performance of right--changes things and relations...it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience...
...LETTERS on the ethical responsibilities of the university in society, President Bok has maintained that, as an investor, a consumer and a recipient of donations, Harvard should generally refrain from acting on moral grounds because such action would be ineffective in achieving its ends and costly to the University. But acts of conscience have never promised success without a price. No one would contend that by selling its South African holdings, Harvard alone could end apartheid or force corporate withdrawal from South Africa--the University simply does not control a large enough share of the stock of any single corporation...
...Michael Spence, professor of Economics and chairman of the ACSR, admitted at the Faculty meeting before spring break that initiating shareholder resolutions can be an effective way to pressure corporations to withdraw from South Africa. But the ACSR shrinks from even this tame action. Instead, Harvard will adopt a reactive stance with regard to shareholder resolutions, voting on those introduced by others, but refusing to initiate its own. On April 3 the ACSR voted to support a resolution calling on the Timkin Corporation to withdraw from South Africa because it had not provided the University with enough information to judge...
Another disturbing implication of the report is that in order to make "a fair and reasonable evaluation" the ACSR will need to collect data for several years before taking any action. Harvard should quit stalling. The evidence the ACSR did succeed in gathering is clear. The blacks who work for these corporations are clustered at the bottom of the pay scale, and are destined to stay there as long as blacks in South Africa are denied basic political and economic rights. Even if the corporations adopted and enforced equitable labor practices, the corporations would still, by their very presence...
...time has come to stop begging corporations for more data and to start taking some action...