Word: apartheid
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...another kind of divestment demand to which Harvard does sometimes respond: demands that trace the funding of evil back to Harvard’s endowment money. The call for Sudanese divestment was such a case, as were Harvard’s divestment decisions regarding tobacco companies, Gulf oil, and apartheid in South Africa...
...effect of Harvard’s divestment decisions, however, hinge on their place in a broader debate. Powerful as it is, Harvard alone cannot bring down the militias, or apartheid, or the tobacco industry. Harvard’s decisions have to fit within a broader movement. On apartheid, Gulf oil, and tobacco, other investors followed suit, and Harvard’s move carried large public weight. So far, Harvard’s divestment from Sudan has been largely neglected externally, and progress on Darfur has been slow. But at least as far as PetroChina is concerned, Harvard has done what...
While Harvard has a long tradition of morally responsible investing decisions—including its decisions to divest from Angola’s oil industry, apartheid South Africa, and tobacco stock—all these decisions were made on an ad hoc basis. This “Bok system” has several problems. First, the “exceptional circumstances” criteria for divestment forces the ethical responsibility debate to be rehashed from scratch each time a questionable investment is discovered in Harvard’s portfolio. Second, the current system means that reviews often do not occur...
Furthermore, the biggest check in the Bok system is the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR). Comprised of professors, alumni, and students, the ACSR was a concession made by the University to student activists demanding institutional checks during the campus debate over investments in apartheid South Africa in 1972. While the ACSR research was valuable in prompting the PetroChina decision, they hold little real power—they can only make recommendations and primarily focus on shareholder votes, not screenings of investments. Overall, the Bok standard of ad hoc ethical decision-making—adopted in reaction to student protests...
...President and Corporation fail to give real power to the ACSR to actively monitor Harvard’s portfolio. Bitter and divisive fights with students and alumni are not worth the cost—last year’s Senior Gift controversy as well as the shantytown protests over apartheid at commencements in the 1980s could have been avoided if a body like the ACSR were continuously screening investments...