Intro: The Ethics of Divestment

Nearly 26 years ago, University President Derek C. Bok wrote that “any policy that encourages the University to engage in boycotts...will have grave disadvantages for the institution.” Yet several events in the past year, including Harvard’s selling its shares of PetroChina, Michigan’s termination of its contract with Coca-Cola, and Stanford’s, Yale’s, and Amherst’s divestment from all companies doing business in Sudan, indicate that this debate is anything but a closed case. And divestment remains in the news—Harvard still holds shares in Sinopec, another company with links to the Khartum regime.

For this Focus, we asked members of the Harvard community on all sides of the debate to discuss the issue of divestment on its broadest level—what are a university’s ethical responsibilities, and how does this practically impact a university’s interactions with other corporations?

—Adam M. Guren ’08, Andrew D. Fine ’09, Ramya Parthasarathy ’09, and Ann Marie Brouillette ’09

Playing the Divestment Card
Towards a Coherent Divestment Policy
A Dangerous Combination
Can Harvard Be an Ethical Consumer?
Timeline: Harvard’s Divestment History