Word: africa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...branching outside the University, the SASC may well feel it has come a long way since 33 blacks occupied Mass Hall in 1972 to protest Harvard's ties to Gulf Oil operations in Angola. Then, the issue of morality in Harvard's investment policy seemed as distant as South Africa itself. But the University publicly accepted the premise that moral and ethical issues should be recognized in University investment policy and established the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), a 12-member committee of alumni, students, faculty and an administrator formed to deal with these considerations...
...three days later the Harvard Corporation issued a report rejecting student demands. Instead, the Corporation said it would review corporate practices in South Africa on a case-by-case basis and talk to the management of banks loaning to South Africa before divesting of its non-voting stock shares...
...student response to the Corporation report was overwhelming--a torchlight march by 3500 through Cambridge streets and a demonstration that cordoned off University Hall for a day. But President Bok and the Corporation defended their decision by asserting that divestiture would be ineffective in shaping corporate policy in South Africa. Instead, Bok said the Corporation would more effectively influence corporate proactices in South Africa by investigating those practices and voting as a shareholder. Bok also asserted the Corporation would not invest in banks that failed to take moral issues into consideration when making the loans...
...deciding whether to make loans. And it all but rejected a policy of initiating shareholder resolutions, saying resolutions requesting information were frequently justifiable, but those demanding action were often futile. December brought into question the effectiveness of the ACSR and its case-by-case review of corporations in South Africa. The undergraduate committee member charged the committee was undemocratic and tended to stall on the issues before it. The resignation touched off a University-wide call for the ACSR's reform. Bok refused to accept two structural reforms of the ACSR that would ensure the committee represented all areas...
Faculty members spoke out against the apparent contradiction of the Corporation's policy. An open letter to the Corporation signed by 140 faculty members, after three successive debates on the University's South Africa policy, called on the University to adopt a graduated, five-step policy for corporate withdrawal...