Why Harvard Won't Divest

The University has in the last decade repeatedly opposed divestment from companies with South African operations, calling the move ineffective as a means of undermining apartheid and inappropriate as way for Harvard to push for reform.

Instead, Harvard has opted for 'constructive engagement.' This doctrine holds that the University can best change South Africa by persuading companies whose stock it owns to implement measures to improve conditions for Blacks.

According to the most recent figures available, about $440 million--or 19 percent--of the University's $2.3 billion endowment is invested in companies that do some business in South Africa.

On October 1, both President Bok and the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR), a four-man subgroup of Harvard's seven-member governing Corporation, issued separate statements attacking divestment. Both reports came after the student-faculty, alumni Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility last year voted 6-5 to recommend Harvard's divestiture.

Bok and the CCSR argued that divestment would;

* mean the University loses any leverage--through proxies and communication--to influence company policy in South Africa.

* be inappropriate because "Harvard's resources were entrusted to us for academic purposes and not as a means for demonstrating our opposition" to various policies, as Bok said

* erode the University's insulation from "outside pressures that would impose an orthodoxy of 'safe' ideas or use the University for ends other than learning or the pursuit of truth."

As of June 30, 1983, four of Harvard's six biggest stock holdings were companies with some operations in South Africa: IBM, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Hewlett-Packard. Investment in those companies totalled about $157 million