Commit to divestment

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Posted: 12/6/07

While the international community continues to increase its pressure on the Sudanese government to end the genocide in Darfur, institutions across the United States, both public and private, are looking closely at what they can do to help end the conflict.

One of the easiest and most effective strategies to address the issue of the genocide in Sudan is divestment - restricting or withholding investments from companies that do business with the Sudanese government.

Divestment can affect Sudanese policies by targeting private companies that work with the Sudanese government. When our nation's institutions do business with companies that work with the Sudanese government, that money indirectly goes toward the Janjaweed militia, which is committing genocide in southern Sudan.

Businesses are profit-driven institutions. By isolating these businesses and thus rendering it unprofitable to do business with Sudan, divestment works to isolate the current regime.

In recent years, a number of high-profile private universities - universities we often call our "peers" - have taken the lead on this by thoroughly reviewing their investment profiles and publicly divesting from Sudan. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth, along with 50 other universities, have all divested.

Unfortunately, Hopkins has not publicly divested and refuses even to consider it.

By conservative estimates, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed in Darfur. And yet the administration does not consider it a moral imperative to publicly and fully divest from Sudan as a matter of University policy.

We find this disturbing on a number of levels, not least of which is ethical. Does the University not consider it an overriding ethical responsibility to review its investments - thoroughly and transparently - to ensure that they do not in some way contribute to the Sudanese government? We do, and we're willing to bet most students do too.

Divestment is more than just a theory. It has a history of success, such as when institutions around the successfully isolated the South African government in the 1980s to end apartheid. Divestment can work again. This is not a mechanism that will hurt the Sudanese people. The money that would be divested is going to the Sudanese government, which is at war with its own people.

University officials have told the News-Letter that Hopkins does not have investments in Sudan. The University's chief investment officer, Katryn Crecelius, has said, "None of our managers is invested in companies in Sudan, whether in our name or in the fund's name." But, where is the proof to back up this claim?

And yet University officials are careful to say that they have not "made sure" that none of their investments go to Sudan. They should make sure. Now.

The University refuses to release any information about where its money is going. This opacity of the administration's management of the Hopkins endowment is a persistent problem. The Sustainability Institute has already given Hopkins an F on endowment transparency. The Sudan Divestment Task Force has said that it's more than likely that a university of Hopkins's size has indirect links to investments in companies that do business with the Sudanese government, possibly through mutual funds. Still, the University refuses to even conduct a review of its investments. Instead, the administration has openly admitted that it has not even asked the question regarding a policy of divestment.

With this information, how can we just blindly trust the statements of officials on a matter of such moral urgency?

It is irresponsible, and indeed morally reprehensible, for the University to claim that none of its investments go to Sudan without either conducting a comprehensive review of its investments or making the results of such a review available for public inspection. The universities that have taken a lead on divestment have conducted thorough and transparent reviews of their respective investment profiles, identified the violating investments and eliminated them. Hopkins can and should do the same.

And, if the University has indeed conducted some sort of review, or is somehow sure that none of its investments indirectly end up in Sudan, why can't it make that information available to the public?

We urge the University to make all the relevant information about its investment profile available for public inspection immediately. We also call on the board of trustees to vote as soon as possible for a comprehensive review of the University's investments, in order to ensure that none of them go to companies that do business in Sudan. This will require leadership, so we call on Board of Trustees President Pamela Flaherty to push for such a review.

It would also be prudent for the Student Council, as representatives of the student body, to take on Sudan divestment as one of its most pressing ethical causes and pressure the University - by building a coalition of student organizations and passing firmly worded resolutions - to review its investments thoroughly and transparently and, ultimately, divest from Sudan. This is an area in which the Council can take up an urgent ethical challenge and lobby the University on the students' behalf. It will take more than the pleas of this page to compel the University to action on this paradigmatic moral imperative of our generation.

More than a quarter of a million have died, still more are dying every day, and the University's money could be helping that happen. Action is the only answer and it must happen quickly. We urge the University to review its investments now, make that review transparent and, ultimately, divest from Sudan. If it does not, its woeful complacency will prove an egregious moral failing - one that will haunt us all for years.