Student projects--the Endowment for Divestiture and the week-long fast by a dozen undergraduates--had little impact on the ACSR's discussions. Some members laughed off the hunger strikers as fanatics or brats--one member ignorantly suggested that the hunger strikers were probably all women interested in losing weight. But if they had little effect on the outcome of Committee deliberations, the fasters at least heightened most of the members' awareness of the gravity of the issue being discussed.
The one external event that probably had a noticeable effect on the Committee was the Open Meeting held near the end of April. Before an audience of 150 the ACSR heard 16 speakers describe in excruciating images and cold statistics the horrors of apartheid and call for an end to Harvard's involvement in South Africa. When a Black South African lawyer, who could face criminal prosecution leading to a death sentence when be returns to South Africa in the fall, finished a moving appeal for total divestment more than half the Committee joined the audience in a standing ovation.
By the middle of May the ACSR found itself repeating the same arguments and counter-argu- ments, with no one giving any ground. The Committee decided to send the CCSR a statement containing several recommendations concerning the South African issue, reflecting the diversity of views on the Committee.
Everyone agreed that the Corporation's current exclusion of ethical considerations from investment decisions was unsupportable. Thus the first recommendation was that ethical factors should be taken into account. Eleven out of 12 of the Committee's members concluded that at a minimum the University should not hold shares in companies which receive unsatisfactory ratings on the Sullivan Principles. Thus the second recommendations was that Harvard should refrain from purchasing shares in such companies and should sell its stocks in them if correspondence with management over a year and a half fails to convince them to abide by the Principles. This recommendation differed from the University's present practice in three respects. It called for the use of the Sullivan Principles as a screen on investments rather than merely as a standard to be applied after purchase. It rejected the notion that standards other than the Sullivan Principles, particularly internal company codes, provided appropriate means for judging corporate behavior in South Africa. And it included fixed time limits on attempts and influencing companies.
The third recommendation, supported by half the Committee, was for total divestiture. Although the recommendation failed to garner the support of a majority of the ACSR, the fact that it had been voted on--this was the first time that the ACSR had considered such a motion--and that it received the support of alumni and Faculty members as well as students was in itself very significant.
The CCSR's reponse to the ACSR's recommendations proved to be a bitter disappointment to myself and the other student members on the Committee. The CCSR refused to commit itself to the exclusive use of the Sullivan Principles--or any other fixed or explicit set of principles--as the standard to rate corporate behavior. It acknowledged that indefinitely long dialogue with companies was "not a satisfactory course of action," yet it avoided establishing any definite deadlines on such dialogue. In response to the ACSR's most minimal recommendation--for the use of ethical criteria in investment decisions--the CCSR indicated that it would discuss the issue at its summer meeting and get back to the ACSR in the fall.
So much for the Harvard Corporation's concern for the burning moral issue of corporate involvement in South Africa. Before I began my own term on the ACSR, I tended to give the Corporation the benefit of the doubt when it came to the moral sincerity of its South African policy. When cynics suggested that the Corporation used the ACSR merely as a shield against student discontent I responded, with a Philosophy's concentrator's confidence in moral debate, that if the ACSR's facts and arguments were good enough they would have a significant effect on the Corporation's policy. My time on the ACSR has taught me a new lesson