Word: divestment
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...weeks ago, the Crimson Staff demanded that the Harvard Management Company (HMC) divest its 72,000 shares of Chinese state-owned energy giant PetroChina because of its oil operations in Sudan. The editors rightfully pointed to the connection between Harvard’s endowment funds and the atrocities in Sudan. Through its investments in companies that continue to operate in genocidal Sudan, Harvard provides political and financial cover to businesses whose tax revenues and advanced technology arm Khartoum for the battle it wages against its citizens each...
...students have responded to the paper’s call for local action. Just last week, two students launched a website that urges Harvard to divest its endowment holdings in Chinese energy firm PetroChina. PetroChina, which has a long history of oil exploration and production in Sudan, lost billions of dollars because of its Sudanese operations during its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000. So far, the student petition has more than 180 student and faculty signatures...
...best to maintain its state and private investments in the white-minority South African regime, still in the grip of apartheid. Even the election of anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Harvard’s Board of Overseers in 1989 did not convince the University to fully divest...
...don’t expect that Harvard alone can do much damage to PetroChina. But as one of America’s most recognizable and respected institutions, Harvard has an opportunity to spur a divestment campaign in this country. If the University divests, other investment funds susceptible to public pressure, such as state pension funds, may choose to divest as well. With formal economic sanctions in the U.N. rendered impossible by China’s veto power on the Security Council and military intervention in Sudan unlikely at best, Harvard must lead the movement to divest—starving...
Even if University divestment has a negligible impact on PetroChina or the government in Sudan, we consider dumping the shares to be a moral imperative. In the recent past, we have declined to call for Harvard to divest from investments that were at best ethically neutral, such as the money Harvard had in conglomerates that owned defense contractors before the Iraq War. Not every case for divestment is as clear as this one. The money Harvard made off its PetroChina investment is bloodstained crimson; if the University still has holdings in PetroChina, it should get rid of them immediately...