ACSR Shapes Up For Second Year As 8 of 15 Return

The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) will not meet officially before October 28, but three-fifths of its members for this year have already been chosen, and the rest should follow shortly.

Eight of the 15 people who served on the committee last year are returning, Stephen B. Farber '63, special assistant to President Bok, said last week. Farber is the Administration's principal contact with the ACSR, which Bok set up last year to advise a Corporation subcommittee on how Harvard should vote its stock on controversial shareholder resolutions.

Last year the ACSR supported shareholder resolutions that called for an end to involvement in white-ruled areas of Africa and others that would have forced disclosure of corporate political gifts, while it opposed or urged abstention on other resolutions against corporate politicking and military contracting.

The returning members include three professors: Robert Dorfman, Wells Professor of Political Economy; committee chairman Stanley S. Surrey, Smith Professor of Law; and Dr. Alonzo S. Yerby, professor of Health Services Administration in the Faculty of Public Health.

Pearson Hunt, Converse Professor of Finance and Banking, is replacing M. Colyer Crum, associate professor of Business Administration, as the Business School's representative. Hunt stood in for Crum at some ACSR meetings last year, and is familiar with the committee's work, Farber said.

No replacement for Matthew S. Meselson, professor of Biology, has been picked, but Farber indicated that Dean Rosovsky may recommend another scientist.

Three out of five alumni members are coming back this year, including G. Jerome W. Goodman '52, author of The Americanization of Emily and, under the pseudonym 'Adam Smith,' of The Money Game, Supermoney.

The other two returning alumni are W. Russell Peabody '39 and Susan R. Shapiro, who graduated from the Law School in 1965. Both work for large Boston law firms. Bok will appoint two more alumni after recommendations by the president of the Associated Harvard Alumni, in consultation with Dr. Chase N. Peterson '52, vice-president for Alumni Affairs.

Two student representatives--Jeffrey L. Balash from the Business School and Rebecca A. Donellan from the Law School--are returning to the committee. The Student ACSR, a group chosen in House elections last Fall, will name two undergraduate representatives from its membership. The fifth student representative, last year a medical student, may come from the GSAS this year, Farber said.

Because no conflicting blocs or clear clashes of individual opinion developed in last year's ACSR, Farber said, it's hard to predict the effects that new members will have on the committee's decisions.

"One thing that surprised me last year was the area of agreement on the committee," Farber said, "though it's my experience that often when you have a group compelled to think something out clearly and directly that it moves closer together." Several ACSR members said last year that they were surprised by the extent of the committee's agreement on issues it considered.

Farber said the ACSR plans to meet October 28 with the four-man Corporation subcommittee that decides how to vote Harvard's stock. It will be the first formal meeting between the two groups.

"They're meeting to discuss the areas of agreement and of difference that materialized last year, so as to reach agreement on all the issues, not just most of them," Farber explained