Word: investers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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LAST WEEK, seven members of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) attended an open forum--sponsored by the Institute of Politics--on whether Harvard should invest in the nuclear arms industry. The rambling discussion on the University's nuclear investments was certainly only a start in the complicated task of forming a comprehensive policy on the subject No conclusive answers were sought, none were provided...
Until the early 1970s, students and others were largely disinterested in the ethical implications of the University's investment policy IBM's practice of selling computers to the South African government was not a topic for debate. (Harvard presently has holdings in IBM worth over $50 million.) As former President Nathan M. Pusey '28 once commented. "Our purpose is just to invest in places that are selfishly good for Harvard. We so not use our money for social purposes...
Since 1972. Harvard's ethical consideration of its investments has largely been continued to voting shareholder resolutions. Many however have wanted the University to take a more active role in offering resolutions as well as voting on those that come in the mail. People have called for divestiture from companies with what they consider immoral business practices. Despite such appeals, however, the University does not initiate shareholder resolutions, nor does it follows any policy of divestment in a certain area, except for its celebrated 1978 decision not to invest in banks that make loans directly to the South African government...
Both Putnam and Walter M. Cabot, president of the Harvard Management Company which is responsible for the day to day handling of the University's investments, have said that they consider themselves ethical investors. For instance, they have said that they don't invest in companies which ignore environmental concerns. Such companies may be acceptable short term investments but eventually, Putnam and Cabot point out, such firms will have to pay for their excesses and are thus bad investments...
Says Frank Scioscia, whose Riverrun Books in Hastings, N.Y., is an East Coast clearinghouse for contemporary literature: "The very idea of a modern book being rare is encouraging." His advice to novices: "Start with a first edition of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow at $150, and invest intelligently at the remainder table. After all, many of the novels published in the '60s became important emotional furniture to a generation now competitively collecting books. Authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Walker Percy and Joyce Carol Gates now command rare-volume respect...