With more than $3 billion in the stock market, as of June 30, 2004, Harvard Management Company holds shares in over a thousand corporations, from Abercrombie & Fitch to Zebra Technologies. The University’s holdings in PetroChina likely represent less than 0.02 percent of the entire endowment.

Activists hope that a move by Harvard to sell its shares of PetroChina could jump-start a broad divestment effort.

Harvard’s stake in PetroChina is “a highly symbolic investment,” Reeves said. He said the University would “send a chill up the spine of all institutional shareholders of PetroChina” if the endowment fund dropped its stake in the company.

“This divestment campaign is going to explode off the blocks,” Reeves said.

MOVEMENT TO DIVEST

Sudan activists can claim a record of success in their past efforts to spur divestment.

Canada’s Talisman Energy came under heavy fire from activists two years ago for its stake in the Greater Nile Oil Project—the same joint venture with the Sudanese government that PetroChina’s parent company has undertaken.

Talisman held a 25 percent stake in the project, while the Chinese firm owns 40 percent of the venture.

In October 2002, Talisman sold its Sudan holdings to an Indian company for $766 million.

And in January of this year, BP Amoco sold its $1.65 billion stake in PetroChina. The move came on the heels of a four-year campaign by black churches and human rights groups in the U.S. to boycott Amoco stations in protest of BP’s links to Sudan—although BP’s decision to drop the shares was likely made due to economic considerations and not humanitarian concerns.

Meyer, who oversees Harvard’s $22.6 billion endowment, said in an interview that the University attempts to consider social issues in its investments.

“Overall, we try in all of our investment decisions to be pretty principled in the companies with which we deal, and I think we’re very successful at that,” Meyer said.

A spokeswoman for University President Lawrence H. Summers said he could not be reached for comment yesterday.

In 1990, the University divested its shares in tobacco companies following objections by students, faculty and alumni. Explaining the divestment in their annual report last year, Harvard’s Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility noted, among other reasons, “the desire not to be associated as a shareholder with companies engaged in significant sales of products that create a substantial and unjustified risk of harm to human health.”