“The members of the teachers retirement fund, if they knew their money was being used to prop up genocidal government...I’m sure they would support me,” she added.

Collins said she first took a serious interest in Sudan during her time at Harvard.

“There was a group of black ministers [in Cambridge] who were involved in going to the Sudan and repurchasing slaves and freeing them,” she said.

Collins then became exposed to the genocide in Sudan through reading about the Sudan crisis in international newspapers.

Collins said she is motivated because she hopes to focus the public’s attention on Sudan.

“[Americans] never get exposed to what’s going on globally,” Collins said. “The African continent receives very little attention....It gets lost in the midst of Iraq.”

“I have a responsibility to educate my constituency,” she added.

Senator Collins’ legislation, if successful, would send an “unambiguous message” to the Sudanese government, Benjamin B. Collins ’06, the co-founder of an online petition calling on Harvard to divest its shares of PetroChina, wrote in an e-mail. Benjamin Collins is not related to Senator Jacqueline Collins.

“Divestment campaigns are helpful ways to raise awareness,” Benjamin Collins wrote. “Divestment can create opportunities for individuals to think about how to best stop genocide.”

Senator Collins said she does not expect immediate results, but is confident that people will agree with the morality of her argument in the end.

“It’s going to take persistence, and labor,” she said. “It has to be a labor of love.”

-Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.