Dartmouth College will avoid investing in companies it has determined to be directly complicit in the genocide in Sudan, the college announced Nov. 13. The decision followed months of lobbying by students in the Darfur Action Group and the endorsement of divestment by the college's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility.
Dartmouth released a list of six companies - ABB, Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, PetroChina, Sudanese White Nile Petroleum, Petronas and Sinopec - in which it will not invest in the future.
Dartmouth has invested in some of these companies in the past, but did not have any holdings in them when the decision was made, said Niral Shah, a Dartmouth sophomore and co-chair of divestment for the Darfur Action Group. The list, which will be maintained and possibly updated, will serve as a "watch list" of companies in which the college will not buy stock, he said.
Shah said he hopes Dartmouth's action will serve as a model for other institutions, adding that many educational institutions are unwilling to take risks with their money, so "precedent matters a lot." He also said that the press generated by Dartmouth's decision could increase the political pressure for other groups to divest.
"I'm hoping that other universities will follow suit," said Ronald Green, chair of Dartmouth's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility and professor of ethics and human values. "I'm hoping that this movement becomes a groundswell," he added.
Scott Warren '09, a member of Brown's Darfur Action Network and organizer of its divestment campaign, said Dartmouth's action will "definitely" help divestment become a reality at Brown. Warren also said the establishment of a watch list of companies to avoid is important because colleges' investments change frequently.
Harvard and Stanford universities have also divested from Darfur, but Dartmouth's list of companies is the most extensive to date. According to Warren, Harvard divested $2.4 million from one company, PetroChina, and Stanford divested from four companies, but did not specify which due to legal technicalities.
Shah said Dartmouth's Darfur Action Group researched an initial list of 120 companies and attempted to discover from the companies themselves if they were active in Sudan. The group then compared its list with a list of Dartmouth's holdings.
"(Dartmouth students) initiated this ... it was really the faculty responding," Green said. In addition to raising the issue and doing research, the Darfur Action Group brought petitions signed by over a quarter of the student body to the ACIR. Green said the ACIR was "very impressed by the Darfur Action Group's work."
After meeting and doing some research of its own, the ACIR voted to recommend action to the Board of Trustees, who, along with the college's investment committee, have the final say, Green said. The board and the investment committee then voted not to acquire stock in the six companies, Green said.
Green pointed out that "divestment is generally a very bad idea" financially, but "there are exceptional circumstances." This is one such instance because of the direct responsibility these six companies bear for the genocide, he said.
Shah said that educational institutions, and Ivy League schools in particular, are "supposed to represent the nation's moral standards," and that investing in companies that facilitate genocide clearly "conflicts with the institution's principles."
The divestment movement at Brown started with a letter sent by the International Crisis Group to 100 colleges and universities encouraging them to check to see if they were invested in any companies active in Sudan, Warren said. Brown's Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility and Investing turned up three companies in which the University had direct holdings. Last May the University divested from one of the companies for "alternate reasons," Warren said. The ACCRI decided one was not at fault and recommended one for divestment, he said.
President Ruth Simmons brought the matter to the Brown University Community Council, which heard from students and decided unanimously to recommend divestment from the company to the Brown Corporation, Warren said.
"It's great that Brown started (the movement toward divestment)," Warren said, adding that other schools have divested as a result of the "largely student movement." Brown students from the Darfur Action Network began advocating for divestment this semester, and their main goals are "to engage the Brown community and really get them behind this ... and to get the ACCRI to extend its recommendation beyond divesting from one company," Warren said.
Warren said the Darfur Action Network has compiled a list of eight companies, comprising six oil companies - including all four of the companies from which Stanford divested - and two telecommunications companies. Brown would be the first university to divest from telecommunications companies, but these two, Alcatel and Siemens, have huge stakes in the Sudanese government and work with the oil companies there, Warren said.
He added that divesting from these two companies would send the message that "no matter what the company is," it should value integrity over profits. The Darfur Action Network has already begun an online petition and is going to expand its petitioning to the post office next week, Warren said.
Warren said Brown's relatively small endowment makes its divestment "largely a symbolic gesture," though the move would also "help get the ball rolling" and increase media coverage of the situation in Darfur. It would generate significant press because Brown would be the third Ivy League university to divest, he added.
The real economic pressure on these companies could come from divestment of state pension funds, Warren said. Such a course of action has been approved in New Jersey, Illinois and Oregon, with bills pending in at least 12 other states, according to a Dartmouth press release.
