The University of California’s agenda now includes the
task of determining the appropriateness of divestment of UC funds
from international companies doing business in the Darfur region of
Sudan.
The UC Board of Regents voted at its meeting last week to send
letters to fund managers expressing concern and to investigate the
consequences of divestment.
Now, a task force will explore the complex question of what
effects divestment could have on the citizens of Sudan and on the
finances of the UC, among other things.
The issue reached the regents’ agenda after several months
of student pressure to divest funds from Sudan, where 400,000
citizens of Darfur have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in
what the U.S. government and others have called a genocide.
Universities such as Harvard and Stanford, as well as states
such as Oregon and Illinois, have divested in various ways.
But some regents voiced apprehension at the meeting regarding
the effects divestment could have on the citizens of Darfur.
Regent David Lee said taking money out of already-poor countries
may harm the citizens themselves.
But Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College who has done
full-time research on Sudan for the past seven years, said very
little of the money held by the controlling regime in Khartoum goes
to social services.
“(Social services spending) all comes from external
humanitarian aid,” Reeves said.
He said the U.S. is the largest donor of aid to the region,
having given over $500 million dollars to Sudan and Chad combined
last year.
Meanwhile, Reeves said, “The Khartoum regime could not
survive without … ongoing international commercial and capital
investments.”
The majority of the money the regime in Khartoum receives as a
result of such investments goes to the military, he said.
Some have compared the current situation to the divestment
campaign directed at South Africa’s apartheid regime in the
1980s, but UCLA history Professor Edward Alpers pointed to some
distinctions between the two.
During the divestment campaign against the regime in South
Africa, there was a “clear expression of support for
divestment” from inside the country, Alpers said.
“In the case of Darfur, they’re just worrying about
staying alive,” he said. “(These) aren’t people
who have access to social services, or are going to.”
Adam Sterling, co-chair of the UC Divestment Task Force, said
any harm that would come from divestment is “greatly
dwarfed” by the genocidal policies of the current regime.
Most of the companies that the proposal is targeting for
divestment are in the oil and energy sector, but that “every
divestment campaign has excluded agriculture,” Sterling said,
a sector that might more directly affect the livelihood of
citizens.
The task force that was created by the regents will also
investigate the financial implications divestment could have for
the UC.
The state of Illinois has already gone through the process of
divestment and has made some of the decisions the UC might face if
it chooses to divest.
Robert Ginis, senior investment strategist at Northern Trust
““ the company that managed the state of Illinois’ funds
and responded to the state legislature’s decision to divest
““ said his company holds no political opinion but acted based
on requests from the state.
Northern Trust invested in seven funds that omit companies with
holdings in Sudan.
“We launched them specifically to accommodate the Illinois
plan,” Ginis said.
Northern Trust used an investment research firm to screen and
interpret the data on companies in order to determine which
companies to avoid, he said.