Divestiture Follies

THE ANNUAL SPRINGTIME orgy of divestiture activity has begun again, along with the name-calling that accompanies it. Once again, President Bok and his colleagues on the Corporation are being subjected to bitter and vicious ad hominem attacks.

"If Derek Bok had been president (of the United States) in 1865, there would have been no 14th Amendment," charged one zealous Law School student at a rally on the steps of Memorial Church a few weeks back, linking Bok's opposition of divestiture with some imagined conspiracy to deny Blacks the right to vote.

Earlier in the month, Bok had to weave his way back through an all-night party, "The Encampment for Divestiture," that bivouacked in front of Massachusetts Hall last month--complete with cases of Budweiser and Hong Kong take-out. Confronted by a mob that demanded he speak up, Bok suggested that the saner locale of his office might be a better environment to discuss Harvard's $440 million of investments in companies that have some amount of operations in South Africa. Divestitures nailed him for trying to avoid the issue altogether.

And then there are the battle cries: "Hey, hey, Derek Bok: throw away your racist stock." "Derek Bok, get the word, this is not Johannesburg." "Hey, hey, ho, ho, there's blood on your portfolio." Bok knows we live in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he also knows what is in Harvard's $2.7 billion endowment and has made sure that Harvard doesn't invest in companies which don't sign the Sullivan principles. Those state that a firm implements dignifying and progressive measures geared toward helping South Africa's Black workers.

BOK simply is not avoiding the issue, and neither is the Corporation. For the last 12 years, they have discussed divesting and Bok has come up with two cogent open letters while the student body has turned over three times. Even in 1972, Bok and his cohorts were seriously considering the worthiness of divestiture; many of those, who now compare that same group to rednecks and Klansmen, were in third grade, learning where South Africa is on the map.

Hugh Calkins '45, the longest-serving member of the Corporation, said this week that the Corporation will be spending a good deal of time assembling a response to the latest report from the Advisory Committee on Share holder Responsibility. Although neither Calkins--nor anyone else--has confirmed it, it is widely known that the ACSR voted by a slim margin for divestiture, for the first time ever.

The point here, obviously, isn't to argue that divestiture activists should tone down their rhetoric because they're hurting President Bok's feelings. After all, he is a grown-up, and used to being dumped on by everyone from A. Bartlett Giamatti and John "Harvard Hates America" LeBoutillier '76 to the most diehard would-be Marxist revolutionary.

AND THE point here also isn't that everyone who believes Harvard must divest thinks the President and Fellows of Harvard College are racist nightriding scum. Indeed, the vast majority of the marchers in front of Mem Hall were likely very embarassed by what one historical revisionist had to say about what President Bok would have done had he been President Andrew Johnson.

What is so troubling and amazing to the cause is its arrogance and frenzy, its unwillingness to accept that Harvard demonstrably is concerned about the horrors of the apartheid state, which rightfully is often compared with a white supremacist Nazi Germany that tossed those it considered inferiors into ghettoes and concentration camps.

Just because an administration which has copiously investigated the South African problem has correctly concluded that taking the Pontius Pilate approach of dumping its moral responsibility for its investments is a bald copout, that doesn't mean it somehow supports racist oppression.

Anyone who's serious about using Harvard's power to instigate desperately needed changes would do well to cut the shrill posturing. Ridiculous personal attacks and allegations that the Corporation doesn't care brand the divestiture movement as one that doesn't deserve consideration.