In the Corporation’s 1978 statement deciding against divestment, it had justified i“We oppose divestment under normal circumstances not merely—or even primarily—because it costs the University money, but because it is an ineffective means of pursuing ethical ends.”

The ACSR also favored shareholder resolutions over divestment, according to Vagts.

“We thought more would be accomplished by having American firms push to upgrade things and improve conditions for black workers,” says Vagts, whose daughter protested in favor of divestment while he sat on the ACSR. “If IBM sold its South African investment...nothing would be achieved, because they would probably be bought by someone who was less interested,” in the political consequences of its actions, he adds.

RECOMMENDED, NOT DECIDED

Not until 1980, however, did the ACSR advise the Corporation to support any of these shareholder resolutions.

In fact, one of the resolutions had been rejected by the ACSR the previous year. At the time, Vagts attributed this shift to the new composition of the committee.

Julie Fouquet ’80, undergraduate representative to the ACSR and chairwoman of the Undergraduate Committee on Harvard’s Shareholder Responsibility (UCHSR), had resigned from the ACSR in February of 1979. She told The Crimson that she did so because she felt that the committee was “stalling” on the South Africa issue and was prioritizing financial benefits over moral responsibilities.

After a year of absence from the ACSR, though, the UCHSR decided that its abstention from the ACSR’s deliberation process was not effective. So they sent a representative—Michael L. Waldman ’82—back to the ACSR.

“Initially we [the UCHSR] said we’re not going to have anything to do with it, because we think you should divest in all circumstances, but eventually I was sent, saying ‘we’ll be part of the process, but the University needs to be tougher on corporations that wish to do business in South Africa and play a more active role in making those corporations a more positive force of change,’” says Waldman.

He joined the ACSR in February 1980—a month and a half before the ACSR made its ground-breaking decision to support a shareholder resolution.

This unprecedented recommendation was characterized in The Crimson as “the first time [the Corporation] faced dissent from within…[after] student charges of the committee’s ineffectiveness and its near-perfect record of following the Corporation’s line.”

The change in ACSR’s attitude was due to the escalating racial conflict in South Africa, according to Vagts.

“The situation seemed to be getting tenser and worse, so that inaction didn’t seem any longer to be a good idea,” Vagts says.

One of the shareholder resolutions that the ACSR endorsed would have forbidden Caterpillar Tractor from selling its vehicles to the South African government military police, who were allegedly using the vehicles in their oppression of the black population,

The other resolution would have requested that IBM refrain from selling to the South African government, which was buying three quarters of its computers from IBM and passing many of them on to places such as population control centers, according to an article in The Crimson.