Divesting Common Sense

To the editors:

As the parent of a current Harvard undergraduate I read with interest the assorted calls for divestment emanating from various faculty at Harvard.

So far I have found calls to divest from Israel and a variety of American companies, as well as rumors of faculty support for divestment from defense contractors (News, “Faculty Question Defense Holdings,” April 8). Perhaps you might educate me as to why the worlds most brutally repressive regimes such as Libya, Syria, Iran, Sudan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia never make it onto the list of those who call for divestment.

Do the totalitarian monarchies and fascist dictatorships of the Arab world have some innate virtue which allows them to viciously persecute women, gays, and non-Muslims thereby absolving them from any Harvard professor’s cries to divest? Does China possess some inalienable right to occupy Tibet such that the politically correct crowd finds them immune from divestment issues?

Mark Shoag

Beachwood, Ohio

April 5, 2003