Members of Brown's Darfur Action Network presented a proposal Wednesday calling for the University's divestment from Sudan to the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsi-bility in Investing.
The 15-page proposal calls for divestment from any companies "that do business in Sudan or with the government of Sudan, in response to the genocide that Khartoum continues to wage in Darfur, Sudan." Additionally, the proposal provides a history of the conflict in the region and argues against any future investment in such companies.
The Darfur Action Network is an affiliate of the national group Students Taking Action Now Darfur.
The committee unanimously supported issuing a recommendation to President Ruth Simmons that is "basically identical to STAND's proposal, minus some details," according to Professor of Economics Louis Putterman, who has chaired the ACCRI since November.
Though the committee's recommendation has yet to be fully drafted, Putterman said all ACCRI members - including three alums, three members of the faculty, one graduate student and two undergraduates - agreed that the University should divest from 10 companies whose involvement in the region has proven helpful to the Sudanese government. The University holds shares in only two of the listed businesses, so the STAND proposal and the planned ACCRI recommen-dation suggest that the Univer-sity blacklist all 10 companies, said Scott Warren '09, advocacy director for STAND.
Eight of the 10 companies have oil interests and two work in telecommunications, Warren said.
Putterman said the details in STAND's proposal, which the ACCRI does not plan to endorse, involve mutual funds and other investments not directly controlled by the Brown Corporation, which ultimately makes decisions about the University's investments.
Wednesday's meeting was the latest development in nearly a year of activity surrounding the University's investment policy regarding Sudan. Last spring, "the president got a letter from an exterior organization suggesting that Brown look into its investments in the Sudan," said Elizabeth Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration.
The letter was forwarded to the ACCRI, which is officially charged with, among other responsibilities, recommending divestment if it might correct a social harm or when the com-pany in question is contributing to social harm inconsistent with the University's principles.
Accordingly, the ACCRI looked into the matter and "found that we were holding a company called ABB, a Swiss-based company considered critical to the Sudanese government's military," Putterman said. The ACCRI recommended in April that Simmons send a letter to ABB expressing concern, though she never sent such a letter, according to Huidekoper. Around the same time, STAND began researching divestment as an option for the University.
Other colleges and univer-sities also considered divest-ment, and Harvard University, Stanford University, Dartmouth College and Amherst College have since divested from "stock they hold directly, not through managed funds," Putterman said.
STAND first presented a divestment proposal to the ACCRI in November, but the committee did not act on it.
Warren, who, along with Chris Talbot '06 and Caitlin Cohen '06, presented the STAND proposal to the ACCRI Wednesday, said divestment is "a growing movement."
"We include all the companies that Stanford and Harvard divested from and added a few more," he said.
Though Putterman said the ACCRI would most likely have discussed divesting from Sudan anyway, STAND "definitely made it impossible for us to ignore the issue."
Once the ACCRI submits its official recommendation to Simmons, divestment will be discussed at the Feb. 14 meeting of the Brown University Community Council, which also advises the president in such decisions. Simmons will then make a recommendation to the Corporation at its meeting later in the month and, if her advice is accepted, a policy of divestment will be enacted. "It's an issue she's quite concerned with," Huidekoper said.
Similar divestment petitions have arisen in recent years. A proposal to divest from tobacco companies in spring 2003 was accepted, while a 2005 petition from the student group Anti-Racist Action calling for divestment from Israel was denied. In regards to Sudan, Warren and the other students involved remain determined. "The genocide's getting worse by the day and this is a direct way that Brown University can take the initiative and do what's in (its) power to stop the genocide," he said.
