“The Israeli divestment community would be overwhelmingly enthusiastic about any sincere effort to ease the suffering in Sudan by supporting divestment,” Assistant Professor of Neurobiology John A. Assad wrote in an e-mail.

If “students do make a sincere effort to push Harvard to divest from holdings in Sudan,” Assad wrote, “you will find no stronger ally.”

Professor of Psychology Patrick Cavanagh also urged students to initiate a petition, and said he would help bring “all the publicity we can generate” to any such effort.

Cavanagh and his family adopted two refugee children from the south of Sudan in July 2002. “Their experiences have taught us much about the horrors of that conflict,” Cavanagh wrote in an e-mail.

“Urging some organization to divest themselves…is a powerful tool that sends a powerful message, but  I don’t think you use it for any little problem that comes along,” Moseley said in an interview Friday. But, he said, “I do think the situation in Darfur deserves this.”

William Granara, professor of the practice of Arabic, said he wouldn’t start a petition—“only for the logistical reason that I’m not technologically advanced”—but added that he would support a divestment effort.

Yet he said that a petition would be unlikely to yield significant results.

“It’s not like a divestment campaign is going to accomplish anything,” Granara said. “The Sudanese government is going to do what it’s going to do.”

Others remained uncertain as to whether they would sign a potential divestment petition.

Professor of Philosophy Richard G. Heck Jr. wrote in an e-mail that “divestment was never intended as a knee-jerk strategy to be applied in all cases.”

“Of course, I am deeply concerned about the situation in Sudan,” Heck said, but he added that he would have to learn more about PetroChina’s involvement in the ongoing conflict before making a decision whether to sign a potential petition.

Paul F. Hoffman, the Hooper professor of geology, joined the effort two years ago to persuade Harvard to sell its holdings in companies with ties to Israel.

Israel and Sudan “are not parallel situations,” Hoffman wrote in an e-mail Saturday. “The problem in Sudan is essentially domestic; the Middle East problem is international,” Hoffman said. “This alone does not make the Sudan situation any more or less serious, but it changes the diplomatic landscape.”

But Hoffman also said that “a broad divestment campaign aimed at pressuring the Sudanese government might have a positive impact, as it did in South Africa.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.