Re-Emphasizing Morality

Harvard can be said to be the birthplace of practicality. It was here, around the turn of the century, that William James developed the philosophy of Pragmatism and began an ethos of realism which is still alive and well at Harvard in 1983. In a place where being called “idealists” carries the implication “naive”. it may at first seem odd that a group of students should protest Harvard’s ties to South Africa by means of a fast.

But the week-long hunger strike is neither idealistic not overly impractical. The fasters have already dramatized on an international scale the indifference of the Harvard Corporation to repeated demands by faculty and students for divestment from companies operating in South Africa.

Corporation members Hugh Calkins ‘49 statement that Harvard’s investment decisions are divorced from moral considerations: President Bok’s conflicting remark that the Corporation had already “decided what is right” by not divesting and Treasurer George Putnam ‘49’s laughter upon hearing of the last have all been publicized, thereby calling attention to the often callous attitude of the Corporation toward students.

The fast is reminder that other universities (most recently the University of Michigan), as well as the State of Massachusetts, have altered their investment portfolios and with drawn their support for apartheid without experiencing financial disaster. Fasting also represents fine complement to the alternative gift fund recently started by members of the senior class, a sum to be held in escrow until the University divests.

More importantly, however, the students (and Professor of Biology Richard Lewontin, who has joined them) have stated the issue as the ethical question it truly is. The institutionalized arrests, torture, imprisonment, murder, and other repressive features of the South African system have been discussed and re-discussed for over a decade, in these pages and elsewhere. The only remaining question is: When will the Corporation act on its self-avowed opposition to the atrocities committed daily by the South African government?

By initiating a protest tactic which is centuries old but entirely new to the Harvard community, the fasters not only reinforce the pressure for divestment on the Corporation but emphasize the seriousness of their moral commitment and invite the Corporation (and the rest of us) to do the same. Hopefully, President Bok and the Fellows of the University will not sit in stubborn silence and watch the opportunity pass by. To quote one group of tenured professors who have thrown their support behind the fasters. “We will forever be ashamed of a Harvard that defines its self-interest so callously that it is incapable of matching the moral thrust of divestiture fasters.”