I believe Harvard should take a public stand for corporate withdrawal. I further believe that the most effective action is divestiture from companies that continue their South Africa operations. Some supporters of corporate withdrawal instead advocate keeping Harvard's money in those apartheid-related stocks and, in Professor Walzer's words, "making a fuss at shareholder meetings." But we should not have illusions about the possibility of implementing change directly through a shareholder vote. Management always controls well over half the votes through proxy and, in the cases I've examined, the votes for resolutions opposed by management average about 3 per cent, and in all cases were less than 9 per cent of the total vote. The value of shareholder resolutions is through the publicity and indirect pressure they generate and, in terms of that type of impact, there is no question that divestiture constitutes a much stronger stand and is so perceived by the corporations, the press and the public-at-large.

There will not be time here to answer all the questions addressed to those who support the divestiture position so I wanted to ask you, as you leave today, there will be copies of a document called the 'ABCs of Divestiture' at both tables near the two exits. This is an attempt to deal with all these questions and includes comprehensive reports applied to President Bok's open letter on the divestiture question. I hope you are able to read thoroughly both President Bok's letter and also our reply to it.

In conclusion, I'd like to quote from the IRRC report on what happened at the University of Wisconsin on this issue. "In May 1977, the State Attorney General informally advised the regents in a letter to sell the University's securities in firms doing business in South Africa. The attorney general's recommendation to divest was based on a state law that prohibits the university from 'knowingly investing grant money and gifts in companies that practice discrimination.' The letter to the Board was prompted by growing student concern over the University of Wisconsin's stockholdings in companies operating in South Africa. In January 1978, the state attorney general reaffirmed his position calling for comprehensive divestment of all South Africa-related securities in a lengthy legal brief to the president of the University of Wisconsin system. In the brief, Attorney General LaFollette stated that the no discrimination standard is the emphatic embodiment of the public policy of the State of Wisconsin against unlawful discrimination. The Board of Regents voted in February 1978 to sell all stocks in companies with subsidiary operations in South Africa." Just as the University of Wisconsin decided that investment in South Africa is inconsistent with the University's professed belief in racial equality, as an alumnus as well as a Faculty member, I strongly believe that Harvard, too, should help further the goal of racial justice by divesting from all corporations which operate in the Republic of South Africa. Thank you.

WALLACE T. MacCAFFREY:

Mr. President and colleagues, I rise to disagree...with what most of the previous speakers have said. I share their premises about the inhumanity and the inhumaneness of the regime in South Africa and I'm sure a commonly-held belief in the University: that is for shareholders and companies operating in South Africa there is a certain social responsibility which falls upon us. But I think I differ as to goals and as to strategies.

The argument made frequently in favor of divestiture, total or gradual, rests, it seems to me, upon the assumption that such an act on our part would have a moral and educative value, first of all upon the boards of the multinational companies, and secondly, current American public opinion--perhaps more distantly even in South Africa itself. That's a speculation, a judgment where each one of us has to make his own estimate of a possible future action. My own judgment here is that we perhaps here in Cambridge overestimate the effect of our actions and our opinions on the rest of the world. I spend a large part of my professional life in other places than this demi-Eden's other paradise, and I'm less disposed to believe that America-at-large waits breathlessly to know what Harvard's actions in such matters will be. I doubt very strongly that divestiture would, in fact, influence public opinion or the opinion of the management of the great companies. Moreover, it seems to me that we would, in fact, I suspect, see a flurry of headlines in the New York Times, something less than a nine-days wonder. And it seems to me that such an action risks being one of those gestures which gratifies those who make it more than it benefits those in whose behalf it is made.

I do think, however, that there are much more modest strategies and goals which in fact can be pursued by the Harvard Corporation. I think as shareholders in large multinational companies, we do have some very modest--and I emphasize that word--very modest amounts of leverage in the management of those corporations and that we can indeed affect, in a very modest and a very minor way, the plight of at least some black South Africans: those who are employed by American companies operating in that country. I mean not only that their incomes may be improved, their working conditions ameliorated, but more important still, at least a small--and it would be no more than a handful as we well know--number of black Africans would be raised to positions of responsibility and acquire some of the techniques of management and technology which will be so vital in the management of a future South African society. And I believe that it is within the reach of the Harvard Corporation to further this very modest goal, one which will produce some real--however small--benefits for a particular group of black South Africans in whose welfare we are concerned. I have no illusions that actions of this kind can break apartheid or break the power of the regime in South Africa. But I do suggest that actions of this kind might have small but measurable benefits on the fate of some few black South Africans.

JOSEPHINE R. B. WRIGHT:

This is the first time I've spoken before this awesome body, and it may very well be the last, since many of us who are junior members of the Academy are becoming migrant workers. I want to address myself to our links to the South African experience. I want to focus on the apartheid experience as a reason why we must take action. I'm here to respectfully yet vehemently disagree with the statements issued by President Bok and the recent change of policy on the part of Harvard's Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. As a woman who is on the faculty of Harvard's embattled Afro-American Studies Department, I'm in a unique location to have a somewhat uncommon status within the University. It is from my humble location in this great community of scholars that I see fundamental connections among the experiences of blacks and women here and abroad. Because of my own experience, I thought that I would examine the available information about conditions of women and of the general health, education and welfare of families in the republic of South Africa to present as my part of the debate today, because I'm interested in looking at the South African experience.

In South Africa, a country the size of most of Western Europe, 13% of the land is set aside for 18 million blacks, 87% per cent of this land is available for 16% of the population that is white. Yet while about half of our blacks live on what are called "reserves" or "bantu stands," 29% live in white urban areas and 24% live on white farms. Most blacks who live on white-held farmland or in cities are strictly temporary. Apartheid is a system which keeps half of all blacks as temporary visitors, subject to immediate removal or resettlement to the hinterland.

But let's examine the experience of women under such a system. Women are viewed as a potential threat to the breakdown of the geographical separation of the races in South Africa. This separation is based on keeping blacks from permanently settling in towns and cities. The migration of women to join their husbands to form family units in cities is seen as destabilizing. So women, for the most part, are restricted to the rural reserves, prohibited from moving to join their husbands. The reserves, or synthetic homelands, are remote, dry areas, populated by the old, the sick, women and children. Men are away, working in the mines. Pass laws prohibit rural women from entering towns and cities.

The apartheid homeland policy imposes a fixed, traditional social structure on rural Africans. Women, who occupy the lowest rungs of this structure are usually prohibited from owning land or carrying out official business. If a rural woman is lucky, she is unemployed but receives checks from her husband who is away working in the mines. She cultivates a small, dry plot of land to feed her family. She is unable to move or to read. If she is unlucky, the rural woman has been removed to the reserves from an illegal area. She lives in exile. Many women spend their days collecting firewood and carrying water from the nearest river or well. Rural women are discouraged from seeking paid employment; there are few paid jobs. But if hired--and 13.6% of rural women are--the rural woman gets the most temporary, menial job and is paid the bottom of the wage scale for equal work.

The experience of urban women is only slightly better. About 1/4 of African women live in towns and cities. About 1/3 of urban women work. It is the most difficult for black women of all the groups in the Republic of South Africa to remain in towns and cities. Policy prohibits women from moving to cities, discourages married women from remaining in town, prevents women from taking apartments under their own names. Most employed, urban African women are domestic servants for whites or are involved in child care, food processing, the garment industry or nursery and primary school teaching. Women employed in public service must be single and mobile. They are likely to be dismissed if they marry. There are no black women attorneys, engineers, architects, pharmacists--indeed no black women university professors in a work force which is 92% black.

Poverty is rife in the Republic of South Africa, a developed country. Subsistence level for an urban family is considered by the South African government to be $150 per month. Income for a family of five, then, is well below the subsistence level. This takes its toll. While the life expectancy for whites is from 65 to 72 years of age, blacks can expect to die before their late 40s. Infant mortality is about one in a dozen live births for blacks versus one in 50 for whites. And in some rural reserves, infant mortality may be as high as one in every four births. In some places, half the children die. The South African government declines to publish these statistics. Yet it is known that severe nutritional deficiencies--kwashiorkor, scurvy, pellagra, beri-beri, leading to tuberculosis virtually stamped out in other developed countries, is common in the rural areas. This starvation which occurs in underdeveloped countries is intolerable in the breadbasket of the African continent. South Africa has farmland as rich as California or Florida. In restricted urban ghettos such as Soweto in Johannesburg, 61% of the population lives in dire poverty, 45% of the children are malnourished. Dwellings are overcrowded. Only 1/4 of the adults have more than an elementary school education. What we have here is a time bomb.

In a subject closer to home, the Republic of South Africa spends ten times more on the education of the average white student than it does on the average black student. Education for whites is compulsory and free. Education for blacks is voluntary and costly. Blacks have to pay to send their children to school. Even so, 75% of blacks have an elementary education. This is compared to 100 per cent for whites. 66 per cent of whites have high school diplomas, while a shocking 4% of blacks do. Out of 18 million blacks there are several thousand college graduates; perhaps 500 blacks receive bachelor's degrees annually. Yet over 9,000 whites yearly receive college diplomas.