‘A RARE STEP’

Harvard’s stake in PetroChina first came under scrutiny last October, after The Crimson reported that the University had accumulated nearly $4 million worth of the stock.

PetroChina is a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp., a state-owned behemoth that has poured billions of dollars into a joint oil production venture with Khartoum.

Within days of the Crimson report, hundreds of students and faculty members had signed an online petition at HarvardDivest.com urging University President Lawrence H. Summers “to publicly state that Harvard will not invest in any corporation that conducts business with the Sudanese government for as long as Sudan is in violation of international norms of human rights.”

Throughout the winter, Summers declined to comment to reporters on the future of Harvard’s PetroChina holdings. But according to Kennedy School lecturer Samantha Power, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning study of genocide, Summers emerged as a strong advocate for divestment behind the scenes.

And in April, the CCSR concurred. In a carefully-worded statement, the committee members said that “this particular combination of circumstances…warrants the rare step of divestment.”

But the CCSR did not weigh in on Harvard’s investments in other companies with ties to Khartoum. The University’s most recent filings with federal regulators indicated that Harvard owned more than $3 million of stock in China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., or “Sinopec,” which is constructing a pipeline connecting oil fields to the coastal town of Port Sudan. The filings also showed that Harvard owned more than $2 million in Tatneft, a Russian company that signed a 2001 deal to explore oil fields in central Sudan.

Divestment advocates will not declare victory until these stocks are purged from Harvard’s portfolio.

The CCSR “has already admitted the close nexus between oil revenue and the ongoing Sudanese genocide,” Manav K. Bhatnagar ’06, co-founder of HarvardDivest.com, said last month. “In light of that, it is egregious that they continue to maintain their holdings in foreign oil companies in Sudan.”

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT?

Human rights activists hope that divestment campaigns can draw international attention towards Darfur, says Colin Thomas-Jensen of the International Crisis Group (ICG).

The deadly civil war in southern Sudan languished out of the limelight for more than two decades. But Harvard’s move to divest from PetroChina grabbed headlines both locally and in far-flung papers—from Singapore’s Straits Times to the Paris-based International Herald Tribune.

Last month, Power and Prendergast, who is now a special adviser to the president of the ICG, sent a letter urging the presidents of the 100 wealthiest U.S. universities to cleanse their endowment portfolios of Sudan-related stocks.

This month, Stanford’s Board of Trustees will consider a student-faculty panel’s recommendation that the University sell its shares in PetroChina, Sinopec, Tatneft, and a fourth firm, the Swiss-based power company ABB Ltd.

“The combination of Stanford and Harvard would provide a West-Coast East-Coast one-two punch that would start to generate real pressure on other universities to follow suit,” Prendergast told the Stanford Daily.