5 New Members Are Appointed to Harvard's ACSR

The new members of Harvard's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) include the headmaster of a Boston high school, an applied mechanics and biology professor who moonlights as a novelist, and students from the Divinity and Dental schools, the University announced yesterday.

Five new members were appointed to the 12-member student-faculty-alumni body, which advises the Corporation on ethical issues arising from the management of the University portfolio.

New committee members contacted yesterday declined to comment on specific issues facing the ACSR, saying they wanted to learn more about topics like investments in companies operating in South Africa or production of nuclear arms.

These two issues have been the committee's most controversial in recent years.

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"I don't know anything about it" said Thomas A. McMahon, McKay Professor of Applied Mechanics, calling serving on the committee a "new experience" for him. But McMahon, a published novelist, did say that politically he is "as red as a stoplight."

"Right now I'm trying to orient myself to what's going on," said Harry A. Dunlevy, a dental student and graduate of Brown University.

The other new ACSR members are the Rev. F. Washington Jarvis '61, Roxbury Latin High School's headmaster; William H. Claflin '65, a Boston businessman; and Divinity School student Thomas Mackall.

Russell Jacobson '83 will serve as the temporary undergraduate member, until the newly created Undergraduate Council is elected and chooses a permanent representative.

Jacobson and several other new members joined current members at the first full ACSR meeting Wednesday morning. At the gathering, the committee continued to plan its October 21 open meeting for the University community on Harvard investments in companies that manufacture nuclear arms.