There is a symbolic significance and importance both of contributing to it and of ending it and of course we are an educational institution and of course we are linked to the evils of the world but education is not value-free and some of the links are more selective and more chosen than others. So it seems to me that the kind of policy of selective, strategic divestiture is one which does its best to reconcile the various concerns of the University, without concluding that the best one can do is exert one's voice and even one shouts oneself hoarse staying in. That's why I think that our objective should be contributing if possible to the end of apartheid either by provoking improvements in the corporations if at all possible, or by obtaining corporate withdrawal, if possible, and if not, dissociate ourselves from it while minimizing the cost to the University.

Mr. President, colleagues, we have come not to quarrel but to think and to try perhaps to arrive at a common judgment or consensus on what would be the best policy for the University to which we are all committed. Perhaps it has been traditional in the history of Harvard that one never drove the principle that financial investments had no moral aspects whatever to extremes. I don't think any historian at Harvard has recorded that a committee recommended that Harvard should invest in gambling casinos in the state of Nevada or in houses of ill repute in such overseas countries. Europe and elsewhere, where such institutions are legitimate, let us say legal if not legitimate. Even though it was well known that some of these establishments yielded handsome revenues. We have always considered legitimacy as well as financial yield in the activities Harvard chose to be associated with.

What is happening now is we are present at a certain shift in moral sensibilities. We have long shared many views of things we consider evil, and in World War II we have been confronted with evil on a vast scale. But one cannot feel with the victims of holocaust and remain--very well--unfeeling about the victims of apartheid. There is in part a change in age groups. The British writer C.P. Snow writes about his children and their friends that they're very permissive about the sex life of their contemporaries but--I quote him--would not be caught dead serving South African sherry.

I confess I have kept some of the older views of legitimacy. I believe that, let us say, fidelity in love is a major value and that change is not always, let us say, a good thing in these matters. But I do feel that there is a shift that we cannot reverse. Racism has become one of the major glaring offenses against decency in our time. It is in the eyes of many young people at least as illegitimate as gambling or prostitution or other activities that are illegitimate in the eyes of other generations. If we are to educate young people, we must not break our common agreement on legitimacy with them. To be sure it will be said that if we took an exhaustive opinion poll perhaps not a numerical majority would feel strongly about South Africa. But even if it should be a minority such minorities have a way of becoming majorities. I've spent a lifetime in trying to estimate or gauge political and moral changes in world politics. I'm satisfied and convinced that this is one of the secular changes and I should not like Harvard University to be on the wrong side of it or to be damaged by this process of change.

Let me add a consideration of the most realistic politics--there are 25 million black Americans in this country. South African apartheid, racism, is a deadly insult to every one of them. There are over 250 million black Africans south of the Sahara in over 20 countries. Racism and South African apartheid is a deadly insult to all of these. There are 5 million white South Africans and 300,000 white Rhodesians (or a little less by now thanks to emigration). The small groups, we know this, sometimes become hardened in their prejudices in long backlash periods. This is what brought about the bitter resistance against the abolition of slavery, and produced the Civil War in American history once. We can have such things again should we confirm unwillingly and unwittingly the accusations of the radical Marxists that the nexus between liberalism and private enterprise, democracy on the one hand and South African racism on the other is indissoluble. This is what is claimed.

I do not believe in it. I believe that democracies can cut the links between racist regimes if voice and persuasion have proved to be unavailing. But what I believe is one thing, and what our actions will tell the world could be another. A gesture from Harvard would be more than a gesture. We are after all something of a flagship in higher education in the United States, and perhaps in a good part of the world beyond our border. We might be able, and I think it is expected of us now by the young and sometimes by the not-so-young, that we might be able to send an unmistakable signal of the direction in which we want to go. This does not mean we have to be theatrical, or unrealistic, or excessive.

I do not think we can go on an infinite regress investigating all the financial moralities of all the corporations down to the last one-tenth of one per cent of financial purity. The world is not that pure. But we could announce that it is the policy of Harvard to reduce and eventually cut its links to any substantial supporter of the South African apartheid regime. We could define this target and say that on the face of it we shall consider a substantial supporter any corporation that has more than one per cent of its assets in South Africa. I'm speaking of the per cent of assets because otherwise we would have to cut all relations with all companies that are big. A big company obviously will have somewhat more a big percent of a big company's more than of a small one. But we have to begin somewhere.

It could be that the company can persuade us that their efforts to reduce apartheid in their own operations are worth making an exception. Or it could be that on the other hand a smaller company fills only the modest orders of handcuffs for the South African police--we might not choose to have Harvard associated with that operation. But on the whole I think a one-per-cent rule might make a tolerable guideline. If we have identified a target we might then proceed step by step very much in the line as indicated by the open letter of Professors Hoffmann, Walzer, Hibbs and others--I mention my departmental colleagues because I know them best--I do think we could then begin, first by voting on shareholder resolutions, both resolutions demanding information and then shareholder resolutions demanding cuts in links that we consider objectionable.

We could secondly then initiate such resolutions if it turns out that the practices are substantial, seriously objectionable, and either reports are not forthcoming or else there is no sign of improvement, we might then announce a policy of non-acquisition. We might then go a step further eventually and divest, and we might try to do this in cooperation with other professional associations and other institutions of higher education. When I became president of the American Political Science Association back in 1969, we introduced a policy of publishing the full details of all our corporate holdings. Our members were free to write in and raise objections. We had a committee to deal with these things, and we have found that the American Political Science Association did not go bankrupt in the 10 years that followed. We could actually continue to function, perhaps with a marginally better conscience.

Now Harvard's investments are vast and the American Political Science Association is puny in comparison to them. But it seems to me that it could be done. In the end we need to work for Harvard in a positive way. I do not know whether any student representatives are present in this room, or whether anybody wishes to broadcast what is said here. There are? I would like to say that if our students collect money for a Biko fund to bring black students from South Africa here, they might logically be interested in admitting that this is a good university. Otherwise they would not do their South African colleagues much of a favor.

If we want to do these things with a good university and trying to make it better we have to work together. I do think we are all committed to make Harvard a better University, and I urge that we set a signal by announcing a policy that is moderate but unmistakable, that we get that which divides us a bit out of the way, so that we can together get together what unites us--a better University. Thank you.

NEAL KOBLITZ '69:

I would like to call attention to a certain discrepancy. In describing the company-by-company approach at the December 12 Faculty meeting, the President said that the ACSR would in each case weigh any positive contributions to black employees against "what they might be contributing to apartheid by the taxes they paid, any strategic materials they supplied, the effect that their existence there might have on American policy and other relevant factors." But this promise of a fair and balanced procedure is not borne out by an examination of the information available from the companies.

I have spent several hours studying all of this material in Lamont Library and have found that, while many companies are willing to argue their case by supplying some limited information on labor practices, hardly any of them supply information on the all-important strategic side of the equation--taxes, the nature and amount of strategic goods and services, connections with the military and police, and so on. Only a handful do answer some of these questions but even they do so in a sketchy, evasive and self-serving fashion. The case-by-case approach, based as it is on information supplied by the corporations themselves, offers no possibility of making a realistic judgment.

But there is good information on the strategic side of the equation which is available on an industry-by-industry basis. Within the last few months the IRRC (Investor Responsibility Research Committee) has released four studies of the major sectors of the economy which comprise the bulk of U.S. corporate involvement in South Africa--the computer and electronics industry, the minerals industry, the automotive industry and the oil industry. The IRRC presents all sides of the question and in each case it is abundantly clear that the corporations do far, far more to support than to weaken the apartheid system. Studying the issue on an industry-wide basis will make it clear why an increasing number of moderate voices, such as the NAACP and the AFL-CIO have recently hardened their positions and now oppose all corporate involvement in South Africa.