The Corporation Refuses to Stand On Apartheid

THE HARVARD CORPORATION'S long-awaited decision on the University's South African investment policy--neatly timed to diffuse student discontent and push any possible response into reading period--once again displays a tragic disregard for the larger moral and social issues surrounding the divestiture controversy. The Corporation's statement, released yesterday, means in effect that the University will do nothing beyond initiating a time-consuming case-by-case investigation into every Harvard holding in firms doing business with or in South Africa.

Perhaps most surprising is that the Corporation managed to ignore the feeble recommendations of its own advisory committee regarding divestiture of stocks in banks lending money directly to the minority government of South Africa. The few socially responsible suggestions that emerged from the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility's six-month study were completely diregarded, lending sad credence to the notion that the whole drawn-out process was meaningless from the start.

The statement also turns a deaf ear to the feelings of a large segment of the student body. That treatment, of course, comes as no surprise, yet in the wake of this week's large and peaceful demonstrations, some consideration and dialogue with those students would seem only fair. The uncommunicative and vaguely paranoid stance adopted by the University throughout this week shows that Harvard is both afraid of and unwilling to listen to its own no-longer-docile students.

WORST OF ALL, however, is the flagrant disregard displayed in the Corporation's statement for the moral issue at the heart of the matter. By refusing to act, for the time being, in a positive manner towards the repressive minority government in South Africa, the Corporation continues to passively support the systematic subjugation of South African blacks. The Corporation magnanimously agrees that apartheid is reprehensible, yet refuses to do what little it can to hasten its end. No one believes that divestiture, in any form, by the University would signal the economic death-knell of South Africa, but the Corporation fails to take into account the moral value any divestiture would have. In the end, the Corporation has proven once again that Harvard is more of a business than a place of education and values.

In the wake of the Corporation's report, the events of the upcoming days are practically impossible to predict. Students have exhausted traditional means of protest, apparently to no avail. We hope that non-violent protest will continue; whatever transpires, however, the Corporation will have only itself to blame.