Tutu Looks for Overseer Seat

The divestment movement showed signs of life this week.

Just as observers readied to write off the latest wave of alumni and student activism, signs of anti-apartheid fervor on campus made their first big headlines of the year, with hints of more to follow.

The announcement this week that South African Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu would run for a seat on the Board of Overseers ensured that Harvard's investment policy would continue to be a controversial issue for the University's governing boards.

In recent years, Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni Against Apartheid (H/RAAA) has focused on the alumni-elected Board as a means of forcing the University to divest of its $230.9 million South Africa-related holdings. By submitting an independent slate of candidates and winning seats on the 30-member board, H/RAAA members hoped to gain enough support among the overseers to force a vote on Harvard's divestment policy.

Specifically, H/RAAA activists hoped that the Board could vote to force Harvard's seven-member Corporation, which decides University financial policy, to divest completely from South Africa. But even after winning three seats, H/RAAA activists were unsuccessful in securing such a vote by the Overseers, who traditionally rubber-stamp all Corporation decisions.

Last year, no H/RAAA candidate won a seat to the Board, and this fall, a special committee recommended changes in the election process which would make it harder for petition candidates--like Tutu and the other H/RAAA nominees--to win seats.

Pro-divestment overseers looked like a dying breed.

But if Tutu wins--and most observers expect he will--the University will have a hard time sidestepping the divestment issue.

"I look forward with great anticipation to the moment when [President] Derek Bok attempts to explain in front of Archbishop Tutu why it is in Blacks' best interest not to divest," Robert P. Wolff '54, H/RAAA director, said this week. "I think the University's position will crumble at that moment."

Although it is not known exactly how many overseers presently favor complete divestment, next year's Board could well include several members with enough public stature to press the University on the issue.

In addition to the three overseers elected on the H/RAAA slate, Tutu and Overseer Sen. Albert J. Gore '69 (D-Tenn.) have already said they support a stronger divestment stand. Activists have also said that Paul G. Kirk '60, the former Democratic Party chair who is a Harvard candidate up for a seat on the Board this year, might favor total divestment.

Just how far this activism will spill over to students, however, is still uncertain.

Yesterday some 50 students gathered at Bok's Mass Hall office to protest apartheid. That rally marked the end of a 24-hour fast by more than 500 participants that sought to publicize the fate of political prisoners in South Africa.

While those numbers are not staggering when compared with the mass anti-apartheid protests of 1986, they are the largest of this academic year. And though they were unrelated to the Tutu announcement--the rally was planned several days before Tutu's candidacy was released publicly--growing student interest could mean that Tutu's election will resuscitate what has been termed the dying divestment movement.

Not that campus activists are claiming any early victories--student protest leaders say they are still concerned that the interest may be waning.

One student called the week's events the "start of a new campaign for divestment."