Bucking a recent trend among wealthy American universities, the University of Chicago has decided not to divest its endowment from companies with business in Sudan, its new president, ex-Brown provost Robert Zimmer, announced Feb. 2.
UChicago also announced the establishment of a $200,000 fund to finance faculty and student initiatives that seek other solutions to the Darfur conflict and similar international crises that may arise in the future.
This decision comes after a series of announcements by nearly 35 other universities in the past several years - among them the eight Ivy League schools and Stanford - pledging to eliminate any financial ties to the Sudanese regime because of its involvement with the ongoing genocide in the country's Darfur region.
UChicago's board of trustees ultimately decided not to divest, after discussing the issue in four separate meetings, according to a memo from Zimmer to student advocates and university officials. "On the one hand, there is some sympathy for the divestment position, although those in favor of this direction comprise a clear minority of those involved in discussions," the memo read.
UChicago's chapter of Students Take Action Now: Darfur has been actively working to convince the university to divest, drafting a petition signed by more than 1,500 students and 110 faculty members and organizing protests, said Michael Pareles, the STAND co-chair.
Pareles, a UChicago senior, told The Herald that students protested on the steps of the administration building to pressure the administration to set a timeline for a conclusive decision on divestment. Their motto was "Nobody does nothing like the University of Chicago."
"I'm making my speech into a bull-horn, and President Zimmer walks out," Pareles said. "He announced, 'You'll have a decision within a week.' A week turned into the next day."
Brown divested its endowment from Sudan while Zimmer was provost. In February 2006, the Brown University Community Council, of which Zimmer was a member, unanimously voted in favor of divestment. The final decision to divest was made by the Brown Corporation, of which the provost is not a member.
Then-Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services David Greene, who is now UChicago's vice president for strategic initiatives, also voted in favor of divestment while on the BUCC.
"We sent Zimmer a letter saying 'we know you voted for divestment at Brown, we hope you'll do the same here,'" Pareles said. "The first thing he said to us was 'UChicago is not Brown.' "
A policy of neutralityZimmer justified UChicago's decision by invoking a long-standing policy of university abstention from all social and political action in the name of maintaining free and open discourse.
The neutrality policy originates from the Kalven Report, which was published by a 1967 faculty committee as a response to the Vietnam War. It stipulates that UChicago must remain neutral in all social and political conflict in order to ensure that students and faculty can openly "sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry."
In deliberations regarding divestment from Sudan, UChicago's chapter of STAND argued that the genocide in Darfur falls under the report's "exceptional instance" clause, which specifies that certain situations require the university to take a stance and act. "In the exceptional instance," the report says, "corporate activities of the university may appear so incompatible with paramount social values as to require careful assessment of the consequences."
The Kalven Report's last living signatory, Duke history professor John Hope Franklin, issued a statement last November in support of STAND, saying that "the desperate situation in Darfur is so tragic that it qualifies as the exceptional instance where I have no difficulty in concluding that divestment is consistent with the core values of our report and the mission of the university."
Pareles told The Herald that STAND held a rally announcing Franklin's endorsement, but there was little administrative response.
"What were they going to say? It wasn't about putting pressure on the university. At that point it was still a debate about the values of the university," Pareles said. "We were still in an ideological dialogue. The purpose of the campaign was to win the argument ideologically, which we did ... reaching the threshold of the Kalven Report doesn't just give the university the option to act but creates the moral imperative to do so."
The Kalven Report was also invoked in the 1980s when UChicago was one of a few colleges and universities to reject divestment from the South African apartheid regime.
However, according to university administrators, UChicago's refusal to divest is not a complete refusal to act in support of ending the genocide in Darfur.
Greene said UChicago's board of trustees debated the efficacy of divestment in comparison to other possible solutions that could be facilitated with the new $200,000 fund.
"The students came up with one solution - divestment. But is this the only thing to do? Is this the right thing?" Greene said. "The university can have a great impact, but it has that impact through the individual work of its faculty and students."
Even considering the broadest list of companies from which UChicago might divest, only several hundred thousand dollars of the school's nearly $5 billion endowment would be affected, Greene said. "The amount the university has invested in Sudan is minimal."
Greene said he is expecting the first round of proposals that utilize the fund to be proposed this month.
"We hope the fund will generate some very creative ideas that might, in fact, have an impact on a situation like this," Greene said. "I hope we end up putting more money into this fund because demand is so high."
"I know the students decided some time ago that they would tell universities that the only acceptable response was divestment ... but their demand does not make other responses less legitimate," wrote Larry Arbeiter, UChicago director of university communications, in an e-mail to The Herald.
"It could be argued that concrete support that allows some of our brightest minds to search for solutions to human rights abuses may actually be more effective over time than divesting of very small investments," Arbeiter wrote.
But many students believe the action taken by UChicago is insufficient. Scott Warren '09, senior national field organizer for the Sudan Divestment Task Force and leader of the Brown chapter of STAND, said divestment is still the primary way universities can impede Sudanese genocide.
"There are people dying every day, and to put $200,000 dollars to the side and say 'this is our share' is doing nothing," Warren said.
Pareles said UChicago's chapter of STAND plans to continue its efforts.
"Since the university refuses to be convinced through reason, we are going to have to try to convince them through force, shame or other means," he said.
