Getting universities to divest from companies doing business in Sudan in ways that support the genocide in Darfur has been one of the hottest campaign issues for student activists on campuses around the country. (It has also been one of the most closely watched topics on Campus Progress, which has published at least this, this, this, and this on student-led divestment movements.)

A lot of the buzz around divestment started two years ago when Harvard became the first major university to announce it would sell its shares of companies operating in Sudan that might aid or at least turn a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur. But Inside Higher Ed reported today in an article titled “Harvard’s Sort-Of Divestment,” that Harvard maintains “indirect” investments in Sudan, such as funds which “include companies supporting genocide in Sudan.”

 

On the question of “indirect” investments — those in broad funds as opposed to the “direct” investments purchased by Harvard — the report said that these were vital to the university’s investment strategy. For example, some of the companies that do business with the government of Sudan are Chinese entities. China has strict limits on the ability of entities outside China to purchase shares of Chinese companies, but these limits do not apply to funds that combine shares of many Chinese companies. If Harvard wants to own parts of those companies, in some cases the only way it can do so is through the purchase of funds that also include companies supporting genocide in Sudan.

 

The statement by the Harvard Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR) explaining its divestment policy related to Sudan is worth reading. It’s not just a fluff-filled press release issued to appease activists briefly with platitudes. Indeed, the matter of divestment is not as simple as universities coming out and saying “We’re divesting because we value human lives over the growth of our endowment.”

 

Thankfully, divestment advocates haven’t tried to portray the issue in this dumbed-down, with-us-or-against-us light as student activists have been known to do on occasion. “I can somewhat understand why a university would be unwilling to address its indirect its indirect holdings,” said Daniel Millenson, national advocacy director for the Sudan Divestment Task Force and a rising junior at Brandeis University. Even so, he continued, “Harvard’s hodgepodge approach is essentially to insist on watering down the effect of divestment.”

 

A few questions to leave you with: Should universities use their endowments as a tool to achieve social change or a political goal? Indeed, there is certainly a fair share of injustice in the world, so who is to decide which injustices warrant divestment from entire sectors of the global economy? And (re the “direct” vs. “indirect” argument I alluded to above) what degree of divestment really suffices as true “divestment”?