Following is the complete text of President Bok's open letter. "The problem of the Divestment," which was released yesterday along with the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility's report on divestiture

*The University may occasionally sell the stock of a corporation because of a disagreement with its policies. Such action, however, is not taken to pressure the company into conforming with Harvard's views but occurs because the University does not wish to continue an association with a firm that fails to live up to minimum ethical standards and offers no reasonable prospect of doing so in the future.

On may 9, 1984 the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) submitted a report on the subject of Harvard's investments in American Corporations doing business in South Africa. The Harvard Corporation's Committee on Shareholder reply to the ACSR report, agreeing with some of its proposals and disagreeing with other. I will not repeal all that is said in that reply. But I will express some thoughts of my own on the subjects of divestment, since it represents the point of greatest disagreement in this community concerning the response of the University to the injustices of apartheid.

Let me begin by making clear that this is not a dispute about apartheid or the record of the South African government. All of us on every side of the divestment issue agree that apartheid is a cruel and shameful form of racial exploitation that has no conceivable justification. Nor does this debate simply reflect a difference of opinion over tactics or money-though I do believe that the tactics of divestment will not succeed and that they would cost University money. At bottom this is also a dispute about the nature of the University itself and the ways in which it should and should not respond to evil in the outside would.

Harvard has taken a number of steps on response to apartheid. We have cast out ballot with care on shareholder resolutions concerning South Africa, often voting to urge corporations to subscribe to the Sullivan Principles, sometimes voting to have a company with draw entirely form South Africa. We have engaged in intensive dialogue with corporations to persude them to improve the quality of life outside the workplace for these employees, their families and nonwhites in general. A number of companies have taken such steps. We have also initiated a program to bring nonwhite students from South Africa to study each year at Harvard. Finally, I have helped to organize a nationwide effort of universities, corporations, and foundations which has brought over 300 Black South African students to study in colleges and professional schools across the country.

Many members of this community would like Harvard to take a different course and divest all of its stock in American companies doing business in South Africa. I have disagreed with this view, and I continue to do so. Much as I oppose apartheid, I strongly believe that universities should not attempt to use their political and economic views on other organizations and individuals beyond the campus. This is essentially what Harvard would be doing by divesting-boycotting the stock of American companies to bring the pressure of this institution to bear against them to have them cease doing business in South Africa.

My views on this matter are not casual; they involve the essential purposes of the University and the terms on which it exists and does its work in our society. Universities have the distinctive mission of promoting discovery, new ideas, understanding, and education. These activities depend on experimentation, self-expression, and the widest opportunity for debate and dissent. They require insulation form outside pressures that, would impose an orthodoxy of "safe" ideas or use the University for ends other than learning and the pursuit of truth. In this respect, the university is quite unlike other institutions, such as governmental bodies, which are designed to exert power over others and to be subject in turn to outside pressures form groups seeking to influence the uses of power in a democracy.

In order to protect the process of learning and discovery, Universities must maintain a reasonable autonomy in the conduct of their internal affairs. They must persuade the outside would to refrain form exerting pressure that would limit the freedom of their members to speak and publish as they choose. They must also preserve the freedom to select the best political activities and to set their own policies without external control save by the government in behalf of established public ends.

Today, these freedoms are generally respected in the Society. But this was not always the case. The autonomy of academic institutions was resisted for many decades by those who thought it too dangerous to allow universities of exist without some control over what was written or taught within their walls. Even now out freedom exists within limits. Like all Freedoms it has reciprocal obligations. We cannot expect individuals and organizations to respect our right to speak and write and choose our members as we think best if we insist on using institutional sanctions to try to impose on them those policies and opinions that we consider important.

The obligation I perceive in no way inhibits individual members of this community from expressing themselves on issues such as apartheid of from engaging in political efforts to promote their views. Indeed, the right to act in this way is an essential part of academic freedom. There is likewise no reason why the University should not perform the function entrusted to it as a shareholder under our laws by voting on issues of social responsibility. The University may even communicate its views through discussions with the officials of companies whose stock it holds. But the line is crossed when a university goes beyond expressing opinions and tries to exert economic pressure by divesting stock or engaging in a boycott in order to press its views on outside organizations.

The more the University acts in this way the more it risks disturbing the implicit arrangements under which institutions of learning can continue to function with the freedom they need to carry out their essential mission. If Harvard insists on exerting leverage on issues we care deeply about individuals corporations, and other organizations are likely to exert economic pressure against us on matters they feel strongly about, such as the radical opinions of particular professors, or Harvard's positions toward ROTC, or the University's policies concerning involvement in covert CIA activities.

Every year, shareholder resolutions are introduced to bar corporate support to universities on grounds such as those just mentioned. These resolutions are regularly defeated because most shareholders are persuaded that corporations should not use economic leverage to influence the internal policies of universities. It would be unreasonable to expect such attitudes to continue if we begin boycotting products or selling shares to press particular policies on corporations and other organizations.

Some of the strongest proponents of divestment are not deterred by this prospect. Indeed, they have organized a fund to be given to Harvard only if it agrees to sell its stock in companies doing business in South Africa. I could not disagree more with this approach. Once we enter a world in which those with money and power feel free to exert leverage to influence University policies, we should not be surprised to find that universities have lost much of their valuable independence. Nor should we complain when we discover that those who wield the most power are not necessarily those whose policies are congenial to our own.

Critics may reply that I am putting the private interest of the University ahead of the plight of the Black majority that suffers under the heel of apartheid. In response, I would begin by resisting the charge that the interests just described are merely self-serving. In carrying out its tasks of education and research a university is performing public functions of great importance to society. The freedoms universities seek, like their buildings and endowments, are not private assets but resources essential to the accomplishment of a vital public mission.

In addition, I reject the suggestion that a policy against divestment will perpetuate injustice, since I see no realistic possibility that having universities sell their stock in American companies will make a noticeable contribution to ending apartheid or improving the lot of Black South Africans. Divestment can make a significant contribution to overcoming apartheid only if all of the following questions can be answered affirmatively.