Word: divested
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Harvard made a laudable decision in this instance, but through its investments in companies doing business in South Africa the University continues to foster and support the apartheid government of South Africa. For this reason we urge Harvard to divest totally and immediately of all such stock...
...almost 15 years now, activists at Harvard have criticized the University's unwillingness to divest of stock in American corporations which do a small part of their business in South Africa because many believe that such operations support the legally enforced segregation, called apartheid. Calling for complete and immediate withdrawal of all assets tied up in such operations, students, faculty, and alumni alike have argued that complete divestiture is the only moral solution to the problem...
...integrity, as would complete divestiture. As President Bok has argued, if the University were to forcefully exert the political and economic clout it possesses, then it could not argue that Harvard must remain autonomous from outside pressure exerted upon it. In other words, if we were to fully divest, embracing the full economic and political ramifications which divestiture entails, Harvard itself might be subject, for example, to its investors lobbying to impose financial and ethical sanctions on Harvard's liberty to invite communists to speak and teach here. If Harvard intends to retain its academic autonomy, it must respect...
...THIS FINANCIAL argument is not the full case against blind divestiture, by any means. More important, if the University were to divest of all of its holdings in operations in South Africa, all of Harvard's stock would be purchased by other institutional investors who generally care only about the bottom line. The corporation in question would not suffer a substantial setback, and Harvard will have done nothing measurable to fight apartheid. In fact, complete divestiture may do more to support the apartheid regime than anything Harvard has done in the past. For Harvard, along with several other concerned universities...
Harvard will divest of its shares in any corporation which does not resolve to forward these measures, not as a punishment to the company which fails to conform, but as an admission of its own failure to bring about substantial change. The University has also shown its determination to increase regularly the number and types of reforms which it persuades companies to initiate, and, subsequently, to expand the number of corporations subject to intensive dialogue...