Harvard Votes With The Angels

The Corporation's committee on shareholder responsibility announced its first decision this week, and it came down squarely on the side of the angels--with some reservations, naturally.

The committee didn't think much of the specifics of a shareholder resolution asking the Caterpillar Tractor Company to send all its shareholders detailed information on its South African operations, Hugh Calkins '45, Corporation Fellow and the committee's chairman, explained in a letter to Caterpillar's board chairman.

But it felt strongly enough about the principle of support for "reasonable" disclosure resolutions--formulated last year when Harvard voted for a couple of shareholder proposals over the objections of Ford and G.M. managements--to vote its $10 million worth of Caterpillar stock for disclosure anyway.

In so doing, the committee accepted the first recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), the 15-member student-Faculty-alumni group President Bok set up last Fall to advise the Corporation. The ACSR didn't rest on its laurels, however, and by Thursday evening the Corporation committee had a new set of recommendations to mull over.

The student ACSR--the elected group of undergraduates which picked the two undergraduate delegates to the full ACSR--recommended Wednesday that the Corporation must either vote for shareholder resolutions to have the Phillips Petroleum and Continental Oil Companies withdraw completely from Namibia, the the south-west African territory South Africa rules in defiance of the World Court, or else "tacitly condone illegal and immoral corporate activity."

The full ACSR took substantially the same position Thursday; though its vote was formally on only the Phillips case, it will probably apply to Con Oil as well. The ACSR also voted to support a shareholder resolution to have General Electric disclose details of its South African operations, but it opposed a few other resolutions aimed at G.E., the most important of which asked the company to report to its shareholders on its involvement in the military's war with Southeast Asia.

The group rejected this proposal not so much out of admiration for G.E.'s military contracting but because most of the information G.E. hasn't already disclosed is classified anyway, Martin J. Auerbach '73, an undergraduate member, explained Thursday.

Phillips's annual shareholder meeting is April 24, and G.E.'s April 25. The Corporation generally does not announce how it plans to vote until its proxies are opened at the shareholder meeting.

The Caterpillar resolution--like all previous shareholder resolutions sponsored by activist groups against management's wishes--failed by a substantial margin. But a resolution's significance is not necessarily apparent from the statistical support it musters. For example, American companies are often quite upset at allegations--especially from prestigious institutions like Harvard--that their taxes, "charities" and sales help support South African apartheid.