[ For an extended overview of the current state of the divestment campaign, see “”The State of Sudan Divestment: An Overview of States, Cities, Universities, and Private Pensions Currently Working on Sudan Divestment,” a report by The Sudan Divestment Task Force, updated regularly at: http://www.sudandivestment.org ]
March 14, 2007: The Boston Foundation has today made an enormously important contribution to the divestment campaign with its creative strategy of “shorting” its holdings in stocks complicit in the Darfur genocide. The full account of this highly innovative way of dealing with so-called passive shareholding is offered on the website of the Boston Foundation at:
http://www.tbf.org/About/about-L2.asp?id=3594
Instead of acquiescing before the difficulties of switching out of funds with culpable shareholdings, the Boston Foundation has determined on the following course of action:
“The Board of the Boston Foundation today announced it has undertaken a two-part strategy that calls for the Foundation to distance itself from companies that are engaged in business in the Sudan. This includes, first, divestment of any direct holdings in such companies, and, second, a new approach of shorting stocks that are held indirectly by the Foundation as the result of investments held in pooled funds.
“The decision affected holdings in five companies, representing $1.546 million in assets.
“‘Using our assets to move an ethical agenda forward is an important part of the history and culture of the Boston Foundation,’ said Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation.
“The strategy was devised to reflect the complex realities of institutional investing while at the same time directing the Foundation to step away from specific investments in a nation whose government has been widely assailed for bankrolling and supporting genocidal violence in the Darfur region and beyond. Already, millions of local residents have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered by government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed. The violence continues to grow, currently spreading across international borders into the nations of Chad and the Central African Republic.
“The strategy achieves divestment without disrupting the investment program of the Foundation. This is a supple approach that addresses the fact that institutions such as the Boston Foundation have little or no control over specific investments in pooled funds or separate managed accounts. It enables the Foundation—or other institutions that use this strategy—to retain positive working relationships with top investment managers while eliminating an economic interest in companies that are doing business with the government in Sudan.
“‘The strategy devised by the Boston Foundation is a true “silver bullet,”‘ said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College who is credited with starting a college campus-based movement to encourage large investors including states and universities to use the power of divestment to press for the end to genocide in central Africa. ‘This removes the last impediment for large-scale investors because it makes it possible to offset pooled investments in Sudanese oil development and the companies doing business in this and other commercial sectors that support a genocidal regime.’
“The current policy on investments in the Sudan was approved by the Board of Directors of the Boston Foundation at its meeting on Dec. 14, 2006, after a presentation by the Investment Committee, which is made up of four members of the Board. It included two parts—a policy on direct investment and one on the more complex matter of pooled investments.
“In specific, the Board directed the Foundation this way:
The Boston Foundation should not invest directly in any company targeted as providing significant revenue or arms to the Sudanese government;
The Boston Foundation should inform the foundation’s investment managers responsible for indirect holdings that the foundation is supporting the targeted divestment movement;
Foundation staff should continue to monitor the situation in the Sudan and the targeted divestment movement; and
Foundation staff should sell short shares in targeted “worst offender” companies to offset positions in these companies held indirectly in pooled funds. This will eliminate the Foundation’s economic interest in the targeted companies without interfering with the investment managers.
“The indirect Sudan strategy involves shorting stocks currently held in many investment pools—in particular those of companies investing in the African nation’s booming oil industry. The Foundation will continue to monitor the investment pools it uses, and will “short” specific stocks deemed to be inappropriate for investment according to its divestment policy using a separate brokerage firm.
“It can also accommodate the realities of pooled investments, in which shares of stocks in specific companies can enter and leave a portfolio over a relatively short period of time. The use of a separate brokerage firm to manage the shorting process makes it possible to continue to take full advantage of investment companies with strong performance records without interfering in their expert investment practices.
“The Foundation has developed the list of companies to be divested with the assistance of the Sudan Divestment Task Force. This organization—the only entity in the area of socially responsible investing that is focused solely on the Sudan—releases an updated list of companies every quarter. This list is provided to more than 500 fiduciary institutions around the world that collectively represent more than a trillion dollars in assets.” ]
[ For an overview of the divestment campaign rationale, see testimony of Eric Reeves before the Massachusetts State Legislature (November 17, 2005) in support of a bill to divest state pension plans of all equity in companies doing “business as usual” with Khartoum’s genocidaires; at http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=525&page=1 ]
[ Also, see the especially notable Amherst College divestment announcement (February 1, 2006):
“The Amherst College Board of Trustees voted unanimously in January to divest any direct investments, and refrain from future direct investment, in nearly two dozen multinational companies whose business activities have been identified as supporting the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur.” The text of this important and deeply considered announcement appears below; for a full list of the companies in which Amherst will refuse to invest, as well as complete text of the trustee resolution, go to www.amherst.edu/magazine/darfur ]
******************
[See also “Yale Acts to Divest in Response to Darfur Genocide.” February 15, 2006; see all documents from Yale Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility: http://acir.yale.edu/sudan.html ]
********************
DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
The National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum seized power by military coup in 1989, deposing an elected government in order to abort the most promising peace process since Sudan’s independence in 1956. Since the 1989 coup, the regime has ruled by means of tyranny, a ruthlessly efficient network of security services, and a brutal domestic policy that includes serial genocide. These fundamental facts of Sudanese political reality have not changed with the formation of a notional “Government of National Unity.” The National Islamic Front dominates this new “government,” and remains an illegitimate cabal of genocidaires, largely unchanged since 1989. They could not survive long without the economic and personal financial benefits that derive directly from foreign investment.
Consequently, as genocide continues to unfold in Darfur and eastern Chad, and the final peace agreement between Khartoum and southern Sudan remains deeply threatened, a growing number of observers—individual and institutional—have argued that there can be no moral justification for holding equity investments in the many European and Asian companies that are now propping up the Khartoum regime by means of large commercial investments and capital projects. (See, for example, Don Cheadle (from the movie “Hotel Rwanda”) and John Prendergast (International Crisis Group), “Universities Need to Divest from Sudan,” October 2005, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3752).
Perhaps surprisingly to many Americans, a number of these European and Asian companies list their shares on the New York Stock Exchange and are held in many mutual funds and pension funds. Other companies list on the London Stock Exchange or exchanges in other countries. Still others seek to enter the US bond market (debt market) in order to raise American capital to support their enterprises in Khartoum and northern Sudan.
How many companies are investing in Sudan in ways that provide the NIF regime with essential commercial and economic support? The list includes a good many more companies than those that have chosen to invest in the oil development sector (highlighted in late 2004 by the UN’s Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell. But all of these companies have chosen to accept payment in the form of Khartoum’s petrodollars—revenues raised from oil development projects located almost exclusively in southern Sudan, though presently used for purposes that only marginally contribute to southern development (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005 calls for the Government of South Sudan to receive 50% of revenues from southern oil production: to date, nothing approaching this amount has been directed to the desperately poor people of the south).
A PRELIMINARY ROSTER OF COMPANIES SUPPORTING
KHARTOUM
An updated (October 2005) database for companies doing business in Sudan is now available from KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. which has been in the business of global socially responsible investing for the past 17 years. KLD has what is perhaps the largest corporate social research staff in the world.
Contact person at KLD: Randy O’Neil
KLD Research & Analytics, Inc.
250 Summer Street, 4th Floor
Boston, MA 02210
Phone: (617) 426-5270
Fax: (617) 426-5299
www.kld.com
Another list is available from the highly reputable Institutional Shareholder Services; see their “Sudan Divestment Resource Center” at:
http://www.issproxy.com/institutional/sudandivestiture/resourcecenter.jsp
ISS describes their efforts in the following terms:
“ISS has been tracking screening mandates since 2001 and the emerging issues in the Sudan since 2003 through a dedicated Environment, Social and Governance research team, backed up by more than 170 research analysts worldwide. As a result, we have developed a comprehensive set of resources to assist the institutional investment community with both understanding the issues and tracking status of regulation, by state.”
Good examples of companies complicit in genocide in Darfur include Sinopec (NYSE-traded) and its giant Chinese partner firm, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), whose major subsidiary is PetroChina (NYSE-traded)—which has recently inherited many of CNPC’s offshore oil assets.
Concerning Chinese oil development in Sudan, The Global Politician noted in its May 7, 2005 article:
http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=691&cid=5&sid=30
“Unfortunately for many Africans, China’s record of resource exploitation and global obstructionism point to an uncertain future. China’s long record of human rights violations in Hong Kong and Tibet; suppression of religious and political freedoms; history of weapons proliferation; support of brutal regimes in North Korea and Iran; and its disregard for indigenous markets, raise legitimate questions regarding its long-term intentions on the continent and its commitment to the African people.”
“In August 2005, Sudan is expected to begin exporting oil from the Melut Basin as a result of cooperative work with Petrodar, a consortium of companies dominated by China’s state-run Sinopec. Sudanese Energy Ministry officials estimate proven reserves in the Melut Basin at 700 million barrels and total reserves at five billion barrels. Petrodar also helped build the Sudanese owned Khartoum Oil Refinery, recently investing $340 million to expand the facility.”
Sinopec is also the major contractor in a $65.5 million pipeline that will now carry oil from the Melut Basin in Eastern Upper Nile (southern Sudan) to Port Sudan on the Red Sea; this has allowed the regime to boost its petroleum exports substantially.
Other good examples of especially culpable commercial presence in northern Sudan include Germany’s Siemens AG (listed on the New York Stock Exchange), recently completing outside Khartoum the world’s largest diesel-powered electrical generating plan and still engaged in telecommunications business in Khartoum; France’s Alstom (also listed on the New York Stock Exchange), now engaged in the huge and highly controversial Merowe Dam project (environmentally unsound and deeply destructive of the regional populations and livelihoods); France’s Alcatel, a telecommunications giant, is yet another company that both lists on the New York Stock Exchange and offers commercial telecommunications support that benefits Khartoum, and the immediate environs of Khartoum; nothing benefits the rest of Africa’s largest country.
A successful divestment campaign against these companies, and their ethically myopic investments, would bring real, unsustainable economic pressure to bear on Khartoum. For its single goal would be to force a commitment by such companies to suspend all commercial activities pending the end of genocidal destruction in Darfur and Khartoum’s full commitment to the final peace agreement with the people of the south.
Importantly, though largely unreported, a number of state legislatures have already passed divestment legislation, including Illinois (the first), New Jersey, Oregon, and most recently Maine (April 2006). California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Washington, Vermont, and other states are actively considering compulsory divestment legislation, i.e., many hundreds of billions of dollars of state-invested funds (primarily pension funds) would be compelled to screen investments and eliminate those that support Khartoum’s genocidaires.
Again, some of these companies are especially conspicuous in their activities in the oil sector. China’s Sinopec is extremely active in oil development, especially in Eastern Upper Nile. China’s contrived corporate entity “PetroChina” is essentially a capital market surrogate for China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the dominant and most ruthless international player in Sudan’s oil sector. (After Goldman Sachs failed in 2000 to secure a $10 billion Initial Public Offering for CNPC, the Wall Street firm created a so-called financial “cut-out,” which became the new entity “PetroChina”: it is PetroChina, wholly controlled and 90%-owned by CNPC, that lists on the New York Stock Exchange.)
THE LOGIC OF A DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGN: IF WORLD LEADERS
WON’T ACT, STUDENTS AND ORDINARY CITIZENS MUST
Why a divestment campaign? Why a relentless effort to ensure that many tens of billions of dollars of stock (equity), held in various US pension funds, college and university endowments, and mutual funds are sold? There are two answers.
First, it is immoral to own shares in companies that now willingly engage in commerce with a regime that is guilty of ongoing genocide. Such investment is no different in character from investment in German industry during World War II and the Holocaust. However high the threshold might be for divestment—what will inevitably be labeled by some as the “politicization of investment decisions”—genocide must surely cross it.
Secondly, there are precious few ways in which to bring meaningful pressure to bear on this brutal and intransigent regime. The UN Security Council gives no sign of imposing sanctions on Khartoum, and China has already made explicit threats to use its veto to ensure that no effective sanctions are contained in any UN resolution. China will have ample diplomatic support from Russia, Algeria, and perhaps others. The Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference have also made clear their opposition to any UN pressures on Khartoum.
At the same time, though the European Union has previously spoken of sanctions, including an “oil embargo,” there has been no meaningful commitment to the former and absolutely no indication of how the latter could be enforced. And indeed, with Sudanese crude refined mainly domestically and in East Asia, and completely without “Sudanese identity” once refined, it is not at all clear what intelligibility the notion of an “oil embargo” has. Moreover, the dominant players in Sudan’s oil development and production are the state-owned oil companies of China, Malaysia, and India. These countries are among the least likely to participate in an “oil embargo.”
In China’s case, we may be certain that there is no willingness to have any international pressure brought to bear on Sudan’s “petroleum sector.” China is now a net importer of oil, and petroleum consumption grows by over 10 percent per year (and China’s economy is especially sensitive to oil “price shock”); Sudan is China’s premier off-shore source of oil. There are simply no human rights concerns—even massive genocidal destruction—that will lead the Chinese regime to accept an embargo or any other threat to its production and development activities in Sudan.
Even so, however, intense divestment pressure will lead Beijing, if only for reasons of economic self-interest, to lean on its partners in Khartoum to halt genocide. Sharply declining share prices for PetroChina and Sinopec will cost China billions of dollars in equity value, and will also have a deeply chilling effect of future Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the US capital markets, even as China desperately needs Western capitalization for dozens of its domestic behemoths struggling to compete under the terms of the World Trade Organization that China has committed to.
But even Europe, despite apparently tough talk in some quarters, is still far from prepared to jeopardize its own economic interests. Germany is a case in point. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was reported over a year ago (September 13, 2004) as saying she “favours tough sanctions against Sudan.” —
“The German minister said that contradictory promises from the Sudanese leadership had not help improve security in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region where Arab militias are accused of carrying out a campaign of genocide.
Wieczorek-Zeul recommended an arms and oil embargo along with the freezing of Sudan’s assets.” (Deutsche Welle, September 13, 2004)
But notably, Wieczorek-Zeul says nothing about the German commercial presence in Khartoum, of the sort emblematized by giant Siemens AG: it is this presence that does so much to sustain the National Islamic Front and convince the regime that ultimately petrodollars speak louder than the cries of death and suffering in Darfur.
(Perhaps it is worth recalling also that the Dutch corporation Trafigura Beheer BV participated from the beginning in the sale and promotion of oil from Sudan’s major producing consortium in southern Sudan, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company [see “The Netherlands to Ship Genocidal Oil” by this writer in Trouw, (The Netherlands), September 4, 1999; English translation available upon request].)
DIVESMENT STATISTICS AND MECHANICS
US public pension plans alone own over $90 billion dollars of equity (shares) in companies like Siemens AG, Alcatel SA, Alstom, Sinopec, PetroChina and a number of others. These pension plans include, for example, California Public Employees Retirement System, Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association, District of Columbia Retirement Board (DCRB), Florida State Board of Administration (FSBA), Maryland State Retirement & Pension Systems, State of Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System, Illinois State Teachers’ Retirement System (ISTRS), Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System, The Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA), New York State Common Retirement Fund, Vermont Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, State of Connecticut Trust Funds (SCTF), Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund (OPFPF), State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB)—and many, many more.
[It is worth noting again that the California State Teachers Retirement System divested in April 2006.
Private US pension plans own many additional tens of billions of dollars of equity in companies that now work to support a regime engaged in genocide. And private US mutual funds have even greater equity exposure to these companies. Finally, college and university endowment investments will in most cases have substantial shareholdings, directly or through mutual funds, in a number of these companies.
While it is not presently possible to know with full accuracy which pension funds and mutual funds own which shares, in which of these companies, it is certainly the right of every pension investor and mutual fund investor to make inquiries today. Much of the information is available in on-line prospectuses, and in other public sources.
Those with discretion over their investments (e.g., a choice of pension plans, a choice of mutual fund investments) should make clear their blunt demand: “divest, at a minimum, from all shares of Siemens AG, Alcatel SA, Alstom, Sinopec, and PetroChina—or I will invest my money in a fund that does not hold shares that are ultimately a form of complicity in genocide.” Strong concern should be registered over the possibility that other foreign equities might reflect investments in Sudan
Here it should be borne in mind that because of comprehensive US sanctions against Khartoum, imposed in 1997, no American companies operate in Sudan (these sanctions were renewed by President Bush on November 1, 2005).
For those in public pensions plans, and no option for alternative retirement investment, the message to pension managers should be clear and forceful: “I am extremely unhappy that my hard-earned dollars are being used to purchase shares in companies operating in Sudan and propping up a genocidal regime. I will register this unhappiness with public officials in this state (or organizational body), and with the news media, and with all who are in a position to force reconsideration of this investment.”
College and university students have a particular opportunity: to force institutional endowments to divest from all holdings (including through mutual funds) of Siemens AG, Alcatel SA, Alstom, Sinopec, and PetroChina, as well as other culpable companies. During the apartheid era in South Africa, college and university students were an immensely powerful force in breaking down this hateful system of racial discrimination. Students now have an even more urgent task: to ensure that endowment monies are not invested in companies complicit in genocide—the deliberate, ethnically/racially-driven destruction of the African tribal populations of Darfur.
Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brandeis, and Brown universities have already divested; so too has Dartmouth and, perhaps most significantly, the University of California (March 2006). They should be commended for their path-breaking decisions, and serve as national examples. Even more impressive is the comprehensive divestment announced by Amherst College (February 2006), along with its public commitment to push the divestment campaign forward in multiple ways.
Shares of these companies are also owned within the TIAA-CREF retirement funds (TIAA-CREF is the retirement investment vehicle for American higher education and is the largest private pension plan in the world). College and university faculty and administrators should vigorously lobby the management of TIAA-CREF to divest all shares of these companies, from all funds (for example, TIAA-CREF’s “Global Equities Fund” recently held shares in Alstom, in Siemens AG [over 2 million shares], and in Alcatel SA [over 3.5 million shares]).
THE DIVESTMENT GOAL
The central purpose of the divestment campaign must be to force these complicit companies to suspend all business and commercial activities in Khartoum until the genocide in Darfur ends and a final peace agreement with the people of southern Sudan is fully implemented. If the UN, the US, and the European Union are unwilling or unable to bring serious pressure to bear on the Khartoum regime, then it is time to “take foreign policy private.”
URGENCY
The crisis in Darfur only becomes more urgent as insecurity orchestrated by Khartoum continues to accelerate. More than 400,000 human beings have already perished; approximately 4 million people in Darfur and eastern Chad are conflict-affected and in need of humanitarian assistance. Last fall, Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commission for Refugees warned that:
“the cease-fire [Darfur] is unraveling, which could lead to a catastrophic increase in deaths in coming weeks and spread instability in sub-Saharan Africa. [ ] ‘People are dying, and dying in large numbers.'” (Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2005)
Speaking of the September 2005 attack on Aro Sharow camp for displaced persons, Juan Mendez, UN advisor on the prevention of genocide declared: “Until last week, there have never been concerted, massive attacks of an indiscriminate nature against civilians in camps in Darfur” (Washington Post, October 10, 2005).
These attacks now occur regularly.
Since last fall, violence and insecurity have only increased, bringing humanitarian assistance to the verge of collapse. Jan Egeland said in March 2006 that he expected to see a massive increase in human mortality in a matter of “weeks.” Even more recently, Egeland declared that humanitarian operations were in imminent danger of collapse, largely because of Khartoum-directed violence and the regime’s deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid. The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks reported (April 21, 2006):
“Rampant insecurity, government obstruction and reduced international support have hampered lifesaving relief operations for millions of people in the troubled western Sudanese Darfur region, the top United Nations humanitarian official told the Security Council on Thursday. ‘I think it’s a matter of weeks or months that we will have a collapse in many of our operations,’ Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters after briefing the Council on the crises in Darfur, northern Uganda and Chad. ‘As I told the Security Council today, I don’t think the world has understood how bad it has become of late.'”
“More than 3 million people are in need of daily humanitarian assistance, Egeland said, with 210,000 of them urgently requiring food. Government obstruction has hampered an effective humanitarian response, observed Egeland, who was barred by the Sudanese government from travelling to Darfur during a recent visit to Sudan. The expulsion of a major aid group that was caring for 90,000 people, and delays in travel permits, visas and clearance for imported relief items and equipment, were other examples of disproportionate government restrictions, Egeland said.”
This violence and barbaric obstructionism continue a genocidal pattern that has been in evidence for almost three years, and in the past five months a number of other camps for displaced persons have been attacked.
Time is rapidly running out for Darfur, and pressure on the Khartoum government must be ratcheted up quickly if there is to be a change of policies in the foreseeable future. The time has come for students and ordinary citizens to make it impossible for this genocidal regime to continue to enjoy the economic benefits of European and Asian commercial and economic support. Divestment from the equity (shares) of the most culpably guilty of these transnational companies is now a moral imperative.
Northampton, MA
September 13, 2004
*****************
Amherst College Board Votes Against Investments in Sudan, February 1, 2006
Amherst College leads American institutions of higher learning with this historic decision:
“The Amherst College Board of Trustees voted unanimously in January to divest any direct investments, and refrain from future direct investment, in nearly two dozen multinational companies whose business activities have been identified as supporting the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur.”
Amherst, Mass. — The Amherst College Board of Trustees voted unanimously in January to divest any direct investments, and refrain from future direct investment, in nearly two dozen multinational companies whose business activities have been identified as supporting the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur.
Amherst’s actions are designed to have maximum impact not only on the college’s own investments, but on those of other institutions, as well. A simple divestment vote would have had minimal effect, as Amherst currently has no direct investment in companies doing business in Sudan. However, Amherst has committed not only to refraining from direct investment, but also to communicating its stance to its fund managers, a small number of whom do have limited holdings (through pooled or commingled investment funds) in some of the companies on Amherst’s divestment list.
“We want to be sure that our investment managers understand our stance on this important issue as they consider their own investments,” said trustee Bill Ford ’83, who chairs the Board’s Investment Committee. “In addition,” said Board of Trustees chair Jide Zeitlin ’85, “we hope to create a climate in which other colleges and universities will take similar action, and communicate their opinions to their investment managers. If these investment firms hear from enough clients, perhaps they’ll decide that the money to be made from investing in companies supporting the Sudanese government isn’t worth it, and they’ll divest their holdings.”
In making its decision, the Board noted that a “divestment action should be considered rarely and only in the face of human atrocities that are wholly inconsistent with the moral and ethical values of Amherst College.” In researching the issues associated with this decision, the Board’s Investment Committee noted “clear and mounting evidence that the government of Sudan is committing genocide against the people of its Darfur region.” The Board further determined that rather than a broad divestment from all companies doing business in Sudan (some of whose actions might be neutral, or even beneficial, to the people of the impoverished nation), it would focus its actions on specific companies—primarily in the oil and gas, energy and telecommunications industries—that are “[providing] the government of Sudan with substantial financial resources and the infrastructure to continue the sponsorship of genocidal actions in Darfur.”
In voting for the resolution, trustee Joseph Stiglitz ’64, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a member of the faculty at Columbia University School of Business, noted that investment in the companies on Amherst’s list wasn’t creating jobs for the people in the region. “In this case, I see little or no benefit to investment; but I do see enormous costs,” he said.
Amherst College President Anthony W. Marx, who lived and worked in South Africa after graduating from college and whose subsequent scholarly research has focused in part on political change in that nation , noted that divestment has the potential to help build pressure that can contribute to powerful political change. “The Amherst Board has been thoughtful and exacting in outlining its plans for using our influence consistent with the college’s principles, and in demonstrating how an institution can act in accordance with such principles,” Marx said. “We have tried to set clear criteria for the companies on our list, and we will be clear about communicating those criteria to the public. Further, we hope to do what so many other colleges and universities have not: to communicate to our fund managers our concerns and expectations, and to inspire them to examine their own investments in this region.” Marx added that he has urged Amherst students to collaborate with peers at other schools on a cooperative effort and is impressed that so many college faculty are pressing TIAA-CREF for similar divestment in their retirement funds. He also noted that the college has non-profit internships that may be available for students interested in conducting summer work in this arena.
For a full list of the companies in which Amherst will refuse to invest, as well as complete text of the trustee resolution, go to www.amherst.edu/magazine/darfur.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Stacey Schmeidel, Director of Public Affairs, Amherst College 413/542-2321