The committee has also been unable to deal yet with its own plans for the future. Meetings at which votes are taken are still held behind closed doors, and few students or ACSR members attended the one open discussion meeting the ACSR has conducted.

Many members think the committee may investigate matters of corporate responsibility beyond other shareholders' proxy resolutions after the current "proxy season" ends this May.

The committee wants to look into questions raised last December by Richard Wilson, professor of Physics, regarding the safety standards of nuclear reactors built by G.E. and Westinghouse, said Stanley S. Surrey, professor of law and ACSR chairman.

Farber said he believes that this Fall the committee might look into government contracts signed with Lear Siegler, Inc., an issue recently raised at Harvard by the New American Movement.

But the most telling basis for doubt remains--in the attitude of the Corporation. Although businesses have probably spent millions on mass media advertising designed to portray corporations as socially responsible, the Corporation, in voting for the Caterpillar disclosure, did not want to ask Caterpillar to go to the trouble or expense of sending the disclosure automatically to all stockholders.

Furthermore, because the Corporation already established a policy favoring disclosures, the vote for the Caterpiller disclosure represented no radical shift. Should the Corporation vote April 23 for Phillips's withdrawal from Namibia, it would set the first precedent for Harvard's voting against management in matters of policy.

It is unlikely that Bennett will support any anti-management fight, or at least so it seems from his past voting record. Until a new treasurer is named, only one other pro-management vote could send the resolution out of the subcommittee's hands to the full Corporation. The Corporation has not shown any predisposition toward acting as an advocate of other people's social responsibilities.

It does not appear that the Corporation expects to take a more aggressive moral stance. Unless Corporation members announce their votes in advance of the companies' annual meetings, members of the Harvard community will be unable to debate those votes to affect the outcome.

Initially the dissipation of student pressure and the natural tendency of students and faculty to assume that Harvard fulfills its responsibilities simply creating thoughtful committees may leave the ACSR less impetus to expand its activities on behalf of corporate responsibility.

Last year, it seemed tenable to argue that the establishment of bureaucratic mechanisms for considering shareholder issues would dissipate what would otherwise be heated student and faculty debate. It seems this year--given the relative inactivity even of black activist groups--that only the ACSR and IRRC have made regular discussion of proxy issues at Harvard likely at all.

The ultimate basis for skepticism regarding the Corporation's involvement in responsible shareholders' actions is the status of the Corporation itself as part of the business world. It is likely that most Fellows believe Harvard's social responsibility is to earn maximum profit in order to preserve the University, that is, their own Corporation. How likely they are to address the political questions of investment squarely is, at least questionable.

"The moral purposes of this University will be questioned as the Corporation's votes come to light," Motley said. "Harvard must realize that we're all implicated in the kinds of activities which support our way of life, in finding human ways of dealing with the corporate technologies universities have helped to develop."

How the Corporation votes next week on the ACSR's Phillips recommendation, the way the ACSR handles the Exxon issue, and the kinds of tasks the ACSR sets for itself when the pressure of other people's proxy resolutions is off will reveal more about the ACSR's potential as a progressive force. But whether investment policy can be changed to reflect the University's supposedly moral purposes, depends largely upon the intensity of independent political action--perhaps a more persistent kind of political action than that which led to the ACSR's creation in the first place.