`What is crucial is the moral and political support they lend to that fossil of history...'

"We therefore, ask all men of good will to take action against apartheid in the following manner: Don't buy South African products; Don't trade or invest in South Africa..." (Dr. Martin Luther King appealing for sanctions with Chief Albert J. Lutuli on Human Rights Day, December 10, 1962.)

"Two doctors from the French volunteer group Medecins du Monde said they were among 2500 persons detained by the South African police. They were beaten with whips and saw the police walk among hundreds of Black detainees, kicking and whipping them...According to the doctors, the terror of Wednesday night was `unimaginable..."' (The Boston Globe, March 31, 1986, "Terror in South Africa.")

"Under the Sabotage Act, the Terrorism Act, the Internal Security Act, the Riotous Assemblies Act, and the Unlawful Organizations Act, the government can arrest whom it wishes and keep them in prison incommunicado, denying all access by lawyers, family, and friends for as long as deemed necessary..." (Pogrund, "The Anatomy of White Power," Atlantic, October, 1977.)

"Each trade agreement, each bank loan, each new investment is another brick in the wall of our continued existence." (J.B. Vorster, former Prime Minister of South Africa.)

"Can we abandon the country that has stood beside us in every war we've fought, a country that strategically is essential to the free world? It has production of minerals we all must have..." (President Reagan, CBS News, March 3, 1981.)

"...I was shown a report the other day that 2100 South Africans under the age of 16 had been detained in the last eight months, and 201 under 18 killed in 1985. Police came into one school and arrested every single child..." (Anthony Lewis, "The Reagan Doctrine," The New York Times, March 31, 1986.)

"We are still seeking a peaceful way. We want a South Africa for all its people, Black and white, where we will live amicably together as God intended us, as members of one family, the human family. And so we ask, help us the last peaceful instrument available to us: your pressure. For nothing in South Africa has changed without pressure. My dear friends, I wish to declare here my endorsement for election to the Board of Overseers of Kenneth Simmons, John Plotz and Gay Seidman." (Bishop Desmond Tutu, LLD '79, January 10, 1986 at the Kennedy School.)

"MacDougall, who is the Corporation's newest member and as treasurer is the top officer in charge of Harvard's finances, said the continued growth of Harvard's $2.8 billion endowment is `essential to Haravard's future.' ...MacDougall said that ownership of stocks in companies with operations in South Africa is necessary to ensure the endowment will keep pace with inflation." (Michael D. Nolan, "Officials at Council Attack Divestment," The Harvard Crimson, March 11, 1985.)

"Divestment was an opportunity for Boston to send a very clear and decisive message that that kind of injustice against a group of people, on the basis of race, was unconscionable. It's not that I don't have enough to do in the city of Boston. I work every waking hour filling potholes. That's my job. I love filling potholes...But there's a more powerful message than merely dollars and cents, and that is human rights, people's lives, and injustice...I would urge Harvard to divest." (Mayor Ray Flynn quoted in Ben Bradlee Jr., "Two Views on Divestment," The Boston Globe, February 24, 1985.)

"By the beginning of 1980, a South African computer industry survey showed that U.S.-owned corporations sold 74 percent of all the computers in the country...Pretoria's battle to preserve white control in South Africa and Namibia is being fought with foreign-made computers as well as mines and artillery." (NARMIC/American Friends Service Committee. "Automating Apartheid," 1982.)

"A little IBM can mean a lot of freedom." (IBM ad slogan.)

"Harvard may be held in high regard as an academic institution, but it will command much less respect if it takes political stands on matters unrelated to education, especially among businessmen who regard these stands as the product of student protest and campus unrest." (President Derek C. Bok, "Reflections on the Divestment of Stock," April, 1979.)

"The main point I want to make is that I am certainly very thrilled with the action the students are taking in that they are being committed to the struggle and are seeking to make the University and other people aware that it is not merely financial decisions that are being made. It is decisions that have to be made on moral principles." (Bishop Tutu quoted in Nat Hentof, "Summing Up," the Village Voice, April 30, 1985.)

"Second, it is clear and understandable that in South Africa and at Harvard political considerations may affect in significant ways what people say and what they do in response to the proposed internship program. The politicization has changed the nature and quality of the discussion and has led to divisiveness, especially in our own community. This result ill serves the interests of Harvard a people in South Africa." (Text of General Counsel Daniel Steiner's letter to President Bok on why the internship program has been suspended.)

"An excuse seeks to extenuate, sometimes to remove the blame entirely from something which would otherwise be at fault. It can seek to extenuate in three ways. First, it can seek to suggest that what is seen as a fault is not really one. Second, it can suggest that, though there has been a fault, the agent is not really blameworthy, because he is not responsible. And finally, it can suggest that, though there has been a fault, and though the agent is responsible, he is not really to blame because he has good reasons to do as he did." (Sissela Bok: Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, p. 74.)

"We're stabbing our brothers and sisters in the back." (Bruce Springsteen on the Sun City album, Artists United Against Apartheid.)

"Harvard does not realize that what is crucial about American companies in South Africa is not so much how they treat their employees, but what they produce, import, and invest in. What is crucial is the moral and political support they lend to that fossil of history, the most racist country on the face of this earth, South Africa." (Text of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's letter to President Bok, March 12, 1985.)

"We now have little public discourse about moral choice. It is needed in classes, in professional organizations, in government. It should be open, not closed to all but special interest groups." (Sissela Bok, Lying, p.98)

"Let me tell you something. We are going to be free. And we would like, we would like very much to be able to say when we are on the other side of this liberation game, in which people have given their lives, people have been incarcerated, young children four years old have been killed, we want, when we get onto that other side, to say, `You know something? Harvard University was with us. Harvard University helped."' (Bishop Tutu, January 10, 1986.)