Putting Off the Day of Judgement

How do you pass judgment on a corporation that refuses to talk?

Although critics of the University's case-by-case review investment policy warned that Harvard probably would face company intransigence, the Harvard Corporation and the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) are now confronting this question as the proxy season begins. They must soon decide how to vote on shareholder resolutions altering corporate practices in South Africa, but at least 12 companies have not supplied enough information to judge their South Africa policy.

The ACSR kicked off the proxy season this Tuesday when it completed a review of corporations in South Africa and recommended that the Harvard Corporation send "forcefully worded" letters to these recalcitrant companies.

The report outlined the employment practices and other activities of almost 45 companies and said the committee "would find it difficult not to recommend that Harvard support a resolution for withdrawal directed to a company that has not disclosed the desired information."

Two days later, the committee recommended that the Harvard Corporation vote for a resolution calling on the Timkin Corporation withdraw from South Africa because the company refused to supply information on its practices.

Despite the ACSR's statement that they would support withdrawal resolutions in the case of uncooperative companies, the ACSR took no such action against the other 12 "non-responsive" companies.

Hugh Calkins '45, chairman of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, said this week he did not want to speculate on how the Corporation's response to the ACSR report, the Timkin resolution and five other resolutions when it considers them this coming Monday.

The Corporation's statement last April says, however, that the Corporation would support the withdrawal from South Africa by any company that "does not disclose substantially all the information required by" the ACSR.

Whether the Corporation votes for the withdrawal of Timkin and other companies from South Africa will depend, it appears, on how it observes its past statements on whether the "non-responsive" companies respond to the "forcefully worded" letters that the ACSR said should be sent.