The decision fulfills the full disclosure policy Harvard adopted for all of its licensees last spring at the insistence of campus anti-sweatshop activists in the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM).

"[Full disclosure] has been a long time demand of the student anti-sweatshop movement," said PSLM member Benjamin L. McKean '02.

"[Now] we can talk about specific places, specific violations."

In releasing factory locations to the public, Gear departed from its original strategy of disclosure.

In November, John D. Joerger, Gear's director of global human rights compliance, said Gear would only disclose factory locations to the universities themselves, not to the world via the Internet. Joerger could not be reached for comment yesterday.

McKean said Gear may have been prompted to go completely public because companies such as Nike have done likewise in the past few months. He said he did not know why Champion chose to release the information only to universities.

"Any company that doesn't [fully disclose factory locations to the public] is lagging behind the others and might well suffer economically as a result," McKean said.