“Divesting is not an effective way to make social change,” he said.

Meyer declined to comment in November whether or not Harvard still had investments in PetroChina, citing the management company’s long-standing policy.

Collins and Bhatnagar said in an interview after the vigil that they met with University President Lawrence H. Summers last Thursday. Summers, according to Collins, said he would “look into” the matter.

Summers so far has not publicly commented on the issue and could not be reached this weekend to comment on the Thursday meeting.

There are some voices within the University, however, who would like to see Summers do more.

Professor of Psychology Patrick Cavanagh said this issue is particularly important to him because he adopted two Sudanese refugee children from the country’s southern region, who suffered through the civil war between the north and south.

“We all hope that [Summers] will say a few words about the gravest humanitarian crisis of this decade,” Cavanagh, who did not attend the vigil, wrote in an e-mail.

But Cavanagh did not blame the management company, whose duty “is not to make political statements but to assure the finances of Harvard for the long term.”

“Understandably, [the management company] will divest only when the University community makes it clear that this is a moral obligation of the highest order,” he wrote.