Approximately 150 University of California students demonstrate last year in support of Sudan divestment on the campus of University of California, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ric Francis)
U. Chicago refuses to divest, but activists persist.
By Niral Shah, Dartmouth College
Wednesday April 18, 2007
Approximately 150 University of California students demonstrate last year in support of Sudan divestment on the campus of University of California, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ric Francis)
In the context of a movement that is gaining momentum nationwide, U. Chicago’s evasive and equivocating responses to STAND activists did anything but put the issue to rest. At each stage, this opposition has galvanized students and community towards the goal of divestment, said divestment co-chair and senior Michael Pareles. After what Pareles called “a series of unfruitful meetings” with administrators, STAND began organizing broader support through outreach, rallies, and petitions. By November 2006, U. Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer agreed to take the matter before the trustees and return a decision by the end of the year.
The university did not reach a decision in this time frame. According to Pareles, administrators approached STAND in January with counter-offers that fell short of divestment. During a sit-in in early February, the administration unexpectedly announced a decision would come by the end of the week. The university released a four-page memo, justifying its refusal as an attempt to stay politically neutral, offering instead a $200,000 fund to further understanding and studies of the conflict. The decision relied on the Kalven Report, a university policy of avoiding political stances that originated in response to Vietnam War protests in the late ’60s.
The decision was seen by many as being full of critical omissions. It failed to reference STAND’s position that the genocide in Darfur fit the “exceptional circumstances” clause of the Kalven Report, in which the university would be compelled to take a position. According to internal memos from the Kalven Commission obtained by STAND, this “exceptional” clause was written specifically with genocide in mind. Furthermore, the sole surviving member of that commission, famed historian John Hope Franklin, wrote a letter to the trustees confirming that the genocide in Darfur qualified for such exceptional treatment. The memo also failed to address the challenge of carving out a “neutral” stance when the only options are holding or not holding an investment.
As for the offer of a fund for academic study, Pareles said, “people in Darfur don’t need a conference and academic papers. They need UN troops on the ground, they need removal of the means by which the regime can arm militias.” STAND activists show no signs of relenting. They believe that the administration’s position is being revealed to be increasingly unreasonable, and that pressure will eventually bring U. Chicago “in line with its peer institutions,” said Pareles.
Still, even where student activists have been successful in winning a promise of divestment, instituting and monitoring compliance of university decisions has brought an entirely new set of problems. “There is no handbook for combating genocide,” said national Sudan Divestment Task Force director Adam Sterling. (Disclosure: Campus Progress, through its Action Grant program, has supported the Sudan Divestment Task Force from its early days.) The rules are being written on the fly, with the goal that individual efforts will build into a collective, critical mass. Yet, at Harvard, despite being the first university to declare its intention to divest, the battle has continued in the two years since the initial decision. The administration agreed to divest of direct holdings in PetroChina, but took an additional year to add parent company Sinopec. Earlier this year, Harvard Darfur Action Group (HDAG) members discovered substantial continuing investments in index funds that include the companies.
“Harvard is ideologically opposed to divestment,” said HDAG leader Sarah-Catherine Phillips. With each subsequent initiative, she added, activists must push the administration to “assemble another ad hoc committee that will take months to issue a decision.” HDAG is advocating for Harvard to adopt the Sudan Divestment Task Force model, a comprehensive and dynamic list of complicit corporations, which is monitored and updated with the help of reputable third-party financial services
“The strongest argument for divestment is moral complicity,” Phillips said, explaining that focusing on the ethics of university endowment investing makes a distant and easily abstracted tragedy a more tangible presence on campus. Phillips focuses on symbolic role of divestment in “providing a portal to activism” and maintaining pressure on the issue. The loftier goal of divestment, however, is to pressure corporations active in Sudan whose operations in turn fund the Khartoum regime’s military expenditures.
“One could say that, financially, we aren’t quite at that level,” Sterling said. “[University divestment] has been a springboard towards state-level divestment and pressure on mutual funds by individual investors.” In fact, some corporations have terminated business in the Sudan, and the Sudanese embassy in the United States issued a plea against divestment, demonstrating they are feeling some pressure.
Ultimately, the success of divestment movements will not be narrowly measured by campus-level victories, but instead by the strategy’s overall efficacy in bringing an end to the genocide. When students at the U. Chicago and Harvard return from summer vacation next fall, they will continue agitating and arguing for their endowments to thoroughly wash their hands of “blood money.” Many activists acknowledge, however, that while divestment is important, it is only one component of a larger strategy.
“If divestment doesn’t work, it is the job of students to use any mechanism they can for leverage against the genocide,” Phillips said. “Students can always hold governments accountable, and put real force behind calls to end the atrocities in Darfur.”
Niral Shah was leader of Dartmouth’s Darfur Action Group, and lobbied strongly for divestment on campus.
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