Amid celebrations last weekend for Brown's new fundraising campaign, "Boldy Brown," came a very disappointing and revealing defeat. The Corporation - the board of alums and others that governs the University - voted through its Investment Committee against responsible investing and global citizenship.
The President's Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investing is composed of students, alumni and faculty and is specifically charged with keeping Brown's investment policies in line with its ethical standards. As some students may know, Brown invests in any and every company that might turn a profit. (The one exception to that is tobacco, from which Brown finally divested only thanks to the efforts of the ACCRI and Kenna Stormogipson '03.) Brown holds stock in companies like Shell Oil, a supporter of military dictatorship in Nigeria; the Freeport Mining Company, notorious for using slave labor in Indonesia; ABB, complicit in the genocide in Darfur; and Raytheon, guilty of promoting illegal foreign wars and of defrauding U.S. taxpayers. But if you ask the administration what exactly Brown owns, they'll equivocate, and you can't look it up because the information is top secret.
Over the last few years, ACCRI members have made several suggestions for ways to continue to incorporate Brown's values into its investment practices. As individual choice and expression are a very important part of the Brown education, members felt that an individual's ability to choose how his or her donation to Brown was invested is a logical step. The ACCRI therefore proposed that donors to Brown's endowment have the option of asking for their contribution to be responsibly invested. This fund would in no way bind all donors or the rest of the endowment to responsible investment but would merely create a new choice.
The ACCRI brought this proposal to create a "socially responsible fund" to the attention of the Investment Committee in the spring of 2003. However, the Invest-ment Committee rejected the proposal on the grounds that the phrase "socially responsible" implied that the rest of the endowment was somehow invested irresponsibly. Rather than noting just how true this was, members of the ACCRI worked hard to accommodate the Investment Committee's demands. The result was a good-faith effort to think about the plan further, engage students about the issues and develop a new name.
Members of the Brown Green Party, along with a number of other students, went out and spoke with students about the need for a fund like this and got over 650 signatures in support. Meanwhile, the ACCRI came up with the "social choice fund" as an alternative title and prepared to go before the Investment Committee last weekend.
But despite our efforts, despite the ACCRI's willingness to come up with a new name and despite the strong student support, the Investment Committee once again refused the proposal. This time, they said that they wanted to see more donor dollars pledged to the social choice fund before they'd budge, a completely new story. Given that both the ACCRI and the Investment Committee have always understood that the money would not be invested differently from the rest of the endowment until a certain minimum could be met, this seems like a pretty shoddy excuse. One now wonders whether the Investment Committee isn't merely fishing for delaying tactics, and if they have ever been 100 percent honest with the ACCRI.
The committee's actions let us know just what they mean by the slogan "Boldly Brown." They will be very bold in asking for donors to give them money, but when it comes to allowing donors to keep that money away from criminally irresponsible companies, that's where the boldness ends. The committee may be willing to ask top executives to contribute, but it is not willing to stand up to corporations with abysmal human rights records.
That is unacceptable. Until Brown changes its investment policies, every attempt on behalf of Brown's administration to appear socially conscious will be overshadowed by the fact that our endowment is directly supporting the exploitation of workers and the environment.
What's the lesson to be learned? Clearly, we can no longer count on the Investment Committee to do the right thing on its own. They need to hear from us, and we need to speak loudly enough to penetrate their dim consciences. It's time to take action.
James deBoer '05 and Marc Carrel '07 are both members of the Brown Green Party.
