Darfur Divestment Faces Uphill Battle
Despite Student Pressure, Harvard Corporation Rejects Comprehensive Plan
Issue date: 10/31/07 Section: KSG News
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This week, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is expected to sign into law a bill that would divest the state's $50 billion in pension funds from two dozen companies doing business in Sudan, in response to the ongoing genocide in Darfur. But as the Commonwealth joins a growing number of states, cities and universities adopting targeted divestment plans, students at Harvard have had little success in persuading the University to embrace a similar strategy.
"It was incredibly disappointing," said Sarah Catherine Phillips, MPP '07, of the Harvard Corporation's recent decision not to adopt a targeted divestment plan.
Last year, Phillips led the Harvard Darfur Action Group (HDAG), which proposed a comprehensive divestment plan to the University, and collected more than 1,400 signatures of support from students, faculty and administrators. The proposal was rejected on June 29 by the Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR), a subcommittee of the Corporation charged with establishing Harvard's investment policy.
In its decision, the CCSR cited a "strong presumption…against using divestment as a political tool or a 'weapon against injustice,'" and said it would continue to follow its "narrowly tailored case-by-case approach" to divestment, rather than adopting a comprehensive approach.
Trevor Bakker, a sophomore at the University and the political advocacy chair of HDAG, said the Corporation "squandered a chance to take the lead," and expressed frustration that the group's repeated requests to present their case were ignored by the CCSR. "I'd like to think our report was so complete that the Corporation didn't need further explanation, but my gut tells me we were intentionally sidelined," he said.
Bakker further noted that the Corporation's announcement of its decision during the summer months "suggested an attempt to evade a student uproar."
The U.S. Government has declared that the violence perpetrated by the government of Sudan in the region of Darfur constitutes genocide. It is estimated that at least 200,000 civilians have been killed, and more than 2.5 million displaced.
Targeted divestment aims to withdraw assets from the companies that commit the most egregious abuses in Darfur, that provide minimal benefit to the underprivileged
and that are unresponsive to shareholder engagement, according to the Sudan Divestment Task Force, the organization that developed the basic model for both the Massachusetts and HDAG plans.
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