No Punitive Sanctions

The staff's knee-jerk reaction to the uncovering of severe racism at Texaco wrongly calls for the University to divest should Harvard not be able to clear the oil company of its tarnished name. In so doing, a mistaken question is posed: The issue is not whether Texaco's executives have institutionalized racism there (they have), but how Harvard can most effectively combat that racism.

Texaco is a public corporation in which Harvard is a stockholder. That equity gives the University a say in who manages the company and in how it is managed. Harvard should exercise its authority constructively within corporate America rather than simply and naively respond with punitive sanctions that ultimately benefit no one.