The Chicago MaroonVolume 94, No. 50 The university of Chicago Friday, May 10, 1985Editorial Protest: South AfricaIn admissions and hiring, the University of Chicago claims it does not dis¬criminate on the basis of race. Its investments, however, fall outside thatrestriction. By holding $46 million worth of companies doing business inSouth Africa, the University offers financial support for apartheid practicesand apparently ignores the human rights violations as long as those compa¬nies show a profit.Or as Secretary of the Trustees Allison Dunham said, “We think the bestobject for the University of Chicago, the lawful position, is to get as muchmoney as possible for students’ education.”The Chicago Maroon condemns the University’s continued investment incorporations not abiding by the Sullivan Principles, and those corporationswhich claim to abide but have documented practices which indicate other¬wise. We have suspended publication for one issue in protest, and we requestthe following of President Hanna H. Gray and the University’s Board ofTrustees:• a divulgence of all holdings in companies involved in South Africa• divestment of holdings in all corporations not abiding by the SullivanPrinciples, or those that have violated the Sullivan Principles (of equalrights and non-discrimination in employment)• further investment only in corporations that openly and actively sup¬port a worldwide policy of non-discrimination.Universities and academies, which ideally promote free exchange ofideas, should also consider a national symposium on apartheid, and on ra¬cial inequality in general. Seated on the South Side of our nation’s most se¬gregated city, the University of Chicago has a special obligation to take thelead in this matter and confront racial inequality on a local, national, andworld level. The University should no longer ignore racial discrimination —whether apartheid • l South Africa, or the racial inequality found in the cityin which this University passively and blindly sleeps.The issues that countSouth Africa has been in the news recent¬ly — you can look at almost any issue of theChicago Tribune and read headlines like “5Killed in Riots,” or “Will US DivestmentHelp South Africa,” or ‘‘Reform in SouthAfrica Sluggish,” etc Even the Universityof Chicago has shown signs of waking upand joining the divestment/anti-apartheiddebate.Over 100 U of C students demonstrated infront of the South African Embassy down¬town last January to protest United States’investment in South Africa. Since then, agroup known as the Ad Hoc Committee for aFree South Africa has formed with about 30members and joins an already activecampus chapter of the Coaltion for IllinoisDivestment from South Africa (CJDSAi.This action is not happening in a vacuum:all across the country at Columbia. Har¬vard. the University of Iowa, Ohio State, theUniversity of Minnesota, Dartmouth.Northwestern and other schools, studentshave successfully pushed for each universi¬ty to review its investments in South Africaand consider divesting.So that’s the big deal and what does itmean for the U of C? Apartheid is widelycondemned as being unfair to blacks whoare controlled physically and economically.Many US companies take advantage of thiscontrol to hire blacks for low wages and ex¬ploit them. Students across the country arecalling for their colleges and universities topull money out of companies doing buisnessin South Africa. This divestment then isthought to put economic pressure on thosecompanies to withdraw from South Africaand cease to support the South African gov¬ernmentWhile many people agree that apartheidis wrong, divestment versus conscientiousinvestment is hotly debated. Hanna Graysaid in a February interview:Some people argue that to be impli¬cated in any way with the holdings ofa company that may do business inSouth Africa is to be implicated in anevil policy that we would all. and doall, condemn. Therefore, purity itselfwould require that we have no associ¬ation with such evil...You get out andsomebody buys those shares. Pre¬sumably it could be somebody far lessconcerned with the social and ethicalissues that are raised by the potentialconduct of such compromise...Ourtrustees would say, and I am in fullagreement, that staying in and con¬tinuing to look at the conduct of thecompany is a better means to the endof responsible investment.To better understand the University’s po¬sition, consider the following issues:1) Should the University invest in SouthAfrica? Hanna Gray claims it is the onlyway to hope for progress there. Yet, al¬though the University subscribes to the Sul¬livan principles for worker equality, theUniversity still invests in companiesthought to be violating those principles suchas IBM2) To what extent should universities beInvolved in lobbying for social change in an¬other country? The U of C has steadfastlyclaimed that political change is not its busi¬ness and that the University should at bestpresent and discuss the issues without tak¬ing action on them This has been the posi¬tion of many universitys’ administrations —investments are purely economic and arenot open to question However, now that stu¬dents at several universities have shownthat their universities have actually lostmoney, the schools are starting to admitthat their position might be changedOfficials at the U of C claim that it wouldnot make sense to divest because our invest¬ments are made on a long term scheduleTrustees in the late ’70s said that they wereconcerned with making money for the Uni¬versity and had to make that their primaryconcern, rather than being an agent for so¬cial change The Maroon printed an articleat that time showing that in fact over thefive year period of 1973 to 1978. the Universi¬ty had lost money in 10 out of 18 investments in companies doing business in South Afri¬ca.3)Is it wrong for University trustees to siton boards of companies that the Universityhas invested in? This is a potential conflictof interest that most universities face. TheU of C deals with the problem through a pol¬ icy whereby if trustee might have a conflictof interest, he or she does not participate indiscussion of the comapny. nor does he orshe vote on the investment.Currently, the U of C is pledged to respon¬sible investment. Hanna Gray says that theUniversity should promote “open discus¬ sion” of the issue of divestment, though.What this has meant from 1980 to 1985 is thatthere has been no organized movement onthe part of students or faculty to hold aforum and discuss apartheid Therefore, theissues haven’t been discussed.Other universities have adopted a moreactive stance of “we think this is a problemand we are going to discuss it until we un¬derstand the issues better or have reachedsome conclusions.” For example, ColumbiaUniversity while they end up having a poli¬cy for investment in South Africa similar toU of C’s, states in a report last fall:”The Trustees of Columbia Universi¬ty act for an instutition that is aunique investor. W’e are an ethical in¬stitution whose purposes extend farbeyond considerations of income Forexample, we cannot own a race trackor a liquor store This is not becausethese activities are illegal but be¬cause such institutions serve pur¬poses at variance with our view ofourselves as a humane institution Oc¬casionally we make errors of judge¬ment but in the main the Trustees tryto follow.a policy of investing only inlegitimate companies which areabove reproach in all our businessoperationsColumbia is an interesting example ofrhetoric which then leads to little if any ac¬tion. In the late 70’s when students called fordivestment. Columbia’s administrationasked the faculty what their stand was. Thefaculty, surprisingly, said they favored di¬vestment and then a committee was formedto look into the University’s investmentsand to form a coherent policy on investing incompanies doing business in South Africa.Columbia froze investments (thus not in¬creasing their investments in South Africa >,but this year when it came time for the Uni¬versity to fully divest, their president andtrustees nixed the idea.While Newsweek on Campus has brandedcollege students today as the new wave ofconservatives who are selfish and con¬cerned about themselves only, the anti-aparthied movement seems to disprove thisclaim In the past month, traditional, statusquo schools like Columbia. Harvard, andNorthwestern, and the University of Iowahave staged protests. And this movementisn't limited solely to large schools — Grin¬ned and Carleton are only two of manysmaller schools that are now taking up theissue of whether their school should divestHere’s a sampling of recent activity at otherschools:At Columbia, 150 students barricadedthemselves in a campus building for morethan a week vowing to stay there until theirschool publicly agreed to divest itself of$32 5 million Other students went on a 15day fastStudents at the University of Iowa stagedthe “biggest protest in ten years' - accordingto an editorial in The Daily Iowan on 5/4/85Over 135 students planned a sit-in in IU’s ad¬ministration building and were arrestedwhen security forcibly removed them after24 hours More students demonstrated out¬side and called for IU to sell its $2 4 millioninvested in companies doing business inSouth AfricaSo, once again, the U of C is not alone intaking more of an interest in South Africanapartheid. Nationwide students and facultyare becoming concerned enough to activelylobby for education, discussion, and actionon the matterThis is at best an introduction to the issueof racism and the situation facing blackworkers in South Africa Further issues thatneed to be looked into include what divest¬ment will do to this University, what controlstudents and faculty have in pushing for di¬vestment. whether it would help South Afri¬cans for the US to pull out, and what effectuniversities can have on nationwide divest¬ment.The Maroon and the Grey City Journalwelcome student, faculty and administra¬tion comments on this very complicatedissueCompany Total Market Value (S) Income (S) Yield (%)Baxter Travenol 1,955,000 180.000 92,210,560 70,080 3.17328,125 8,250 2.51Coca Cola 1,000,938 98,750 2.32Control Data 3,525,000 66,000 1.87Deere & Co. 1,980,000 1.800 9.091st Chicago 3,420,000 211,200 6.18General Electric 7,941,090 308,528 3.89General Motors 2,010,400 215,000 4.66IBM 9,850,000 357,000 3.57Mobil Oil 4,901,488 397,540 8.11Motorola 975,833 87,000 8.7Proctor & Gamble 1,279,503 111,800 4.56Squibb 5,387,500 160,000 3.4TOTAL 546,765,437 52,272,948Total of allSecurity Holdings 5532,865,755 532,864,693 6.17U of C investment in companies directly or indirectly involved in South Africaas of December 31, 1984.The Chicago MaroonThe University of ChicagoEditorial Protest: South AfricaIn admissions and hiring, the University of Chicago claims it does not dis¬criminate on the basis of race. Its investments, however, fall outside thatrestriction. By holding $46 million worth of companies doing business inSouth Africa, the University offers financial support for apartheid practicesand apparently ignores the human rights violations as long as those compa¬nies show a profit.Or as Secretary of the Trustees Allison Dunham said, “We think the bestobject for the University of Chicago, the lawful position, is to get as muchmoney as possible for students’ education.”The Chicago Maroon condemns the University’s continued investment incorporations not abiding by the Sullivan Principles, and those corporationswhich claim to abide but have documented practices which indicate other¬wise. We have suspended publication for one issue in protest, and we requestthe following of President Hanna H. Gray and the University’s Board ofTrustees:• a divulgence of all holdings in companies involved in South Africa• divestment of holdings in all corporations not abiding by the SullivanPrinciples, or those that have violated the Sullivan Principles (of equalrights and non-discrimination in employment)• further investment only in corporations that openly and actively sup¬port a worldwide policy of non-discrimination.Universities and academies, which ideally promote free exchange ofideas, should also consider a national symposium on apartheid, and on ra¬cial inequality in general. Seated on the South Side of our nation’s most se¬gregated city, the University of Chicago has a special obligation to take thelead in this matter and confront racial inequality on a local, national, andworld level. The University should no longer ignore racial discrimination —whether apartheid • 1 South Africa, or the racial inequality found in the cityin which this University passively and blindly sleeps.The issues that countVolume 94, No. r>0South Africa has been in the news recent¬ly — you can look at almost any issue of theChicago Tribune and read headlines like “5Killed in Riots,” or “Will US DivestmentHelp South Africa,” or “Reform in SouthAfrica Sluggish,” etc. Even the Universityof Chicago has shown signs of waking upand joining the divestment/anti-apartheiddebate.Over 100 U of C students demonstrated infront of the South African Embassy down¬town last January to protest United States’investment in South Africa. Since then, agroup known as the Ad Hoc Committee for aFree South Africa has formed with about 30members and joins an already activecampus chapter of the Coaltion for IllinoisDivestment from South Africa (CIDSAt.This action is not happening in a vacuum:all across the country at Columbia. Har¬vard, the University of Iowa, Ohio State, theUniversity of Minnesota, Dartmouth,Northwestern and other schools, studentshave successfully pushed for each universi¬ty to review its investments in South Africaand consider divesting.So that’s the big deal and what does itmean for the U of C? Apartheid is widelycondemned as being unfair to blacks whoare controlled physically and economically.Many US companies take advantage of thiscontrol to hire blacks for low wages and ex¬ploit them. Students across the country arecalling for their colleges and universities topull money out of companies doing buisnessin South Africa. This divestment then isthought to put economic pressure on thosecompanies to withdraw from South Africaand cease to support the South African gov¬ernment.While many people agree that apartheidis wrong, divestment versus conscientiousinvestment is hotly debated. Hanna Graysaid in a February interview:Some people argue that to be impli¬cated in any way with the holdings ofa company that may do business inSouth Africa is to be implicated in anevil policy that we would all. and doall, condemn. Therefore, purity itselfwould require that we have no associ¬ation with such evil...You get out andsomebody buys those shares. Pre¬sumably it could be somebody far lessconcerned with the social and ethicalissues that are raised by the potentialconduct of such compromise...Ourtrustees would say. and I am in fullagreement, that staying in and con¬tinuing to look at the conduct of thecompany is a better means to the endof responsible investment.To better understand the University’s po¬sition, consider the following issues:1) Should the University invest in SouthAfrica? Hanna Gray claims it is the onlyway to hope for progress there. Yet, al¬though the University subscribes to the Sul¬livan principles for worker equality, theUniversity still invests in companiesthought to be violating those principles suchas IBM.2) To what extent should universities betnvolved in lobbying for social change in an¬other country? The U of C has steadfastlyclaimed that political change is not its busi¬ness and that the University should at bestpresent and discuss the issues without tak¬ing action on them This has been the posi¬tion of many universitys' administrations —investments are purely economic and arenot open to question However, now that stu¬dents at several universities have shownthat their universities have actually lostmoney, the schools are starting to admitthat their position might be changedOfficials at the U of C claim that it wouldnot make sense to divest because our invest¬ments are made on a long term scheduleTrustees in the late 70s said that they wereconcerned with making money for the Uni¬versity and had to make that their primaryconcern, rather than being an agent for so¬cial change. The Maroon printed an articleat that time showing that in fact over thefive year period of 1973 to 1978. the Universi¬ty had lost money in 10 out of 18 investments in companies doing business in South Afri¬ca.3)Is it wrong for University trustees to siton boards of companies that the Universityhas invested in? This is a potential conflictof interest that most universities face. TheU of C deals with the problem through a pol¬ icy whereby if trustee might have a conflictof interest, he or she does not participate indiscussion of the comapny. nor does he orshe vote on the investment.Currently, the U of C is pledged to respon¬sible investment. Hanna Gray says that theUniversity should promote “open discus- Friday, May 10, 1985sion” of the issue of divestment, thoughWhat this has meant from 1980 to 1985 is thatthere has been no organized movement onthe part of students or faculty to hold aforum and discuss apartheid. Therefore, theissues haven’t been discussed.Other universities have adopted a moreactive stance of “we think this is a problemand we are going to discuss it until we un¬derstand the issues better or have reachedsome conclusions.” For example, ColumbiaUniversity while they end up having a poli¬cy for investment in South Africa similar toU of C’s, states in a report last fall:”The Trustees of Columbia Universi¬ty act for an instutition that is aunique investor. We are an ethical in¬stitution whose purposes extend farbeyond considerations of income. Forexample, we cannot own a race trackor a liquor store This is not becausethese activities are illegal but be¬cause such institutions serve pur¬poses at variance with our view ofourselves as a humane institution. Oc¬casionally we make errors of judge¬ment but in the main the Trustees tryto follow.a policy of investing only inlegitimate companies which areabove reproach in all our businessoperationsColumbia is an interesting example ofrhetoric which then leads to little if any ac¬tion. In the late 70’s when students called fordivestment. Columbia’s administrationasked the faculty what their stand was. Thefaculty, surprisingly, said they favored di¬vestment and then a committee was formedto look into the University’s investmentsand to form a coherent policy on investing incompanies doing business in South Africa.Columbia froze investments 'thus not in¬creasing their investments in South Africa i,but this year w hen it came time for the Uni¬versity to fully divest, their president andtrustees nixed the idea.While .Newsweek on Campus has brandedcollege students today as the new wave ofconservatives who are selfish and con¬cerned about themselves only, the anti-aparthied movement seems to disprove thisclaim. In the past month, traditional, statusquo schools like Columbia. Harvard, andNorthwestern, and the University of Iowahave staged protests. And this movementisn’t limited solely to large schools — Grin-nell and Carleton are only two of manysmaller schools that are now taking up theissue of whether their school should divestHere’s a sampling of recent activity at otherschools.At Columbia, 150 students barricadedthemselves in a campus building for morethan a week vowing to stay there until theirschool publicly agreed to divest itself of$32 5 million. Other students went on a 15day fastStudents at the University of Iowa stagedthe “biggest protest in ten years" accordingto an editorial in The Daily Iowan on 5/4/85.Over 135 students planned a sit-in in IU’s ad¬ministration building and were arrestedwhen security forcibly removed them after24 hours More students demonstrated out¬side and called for IU to sell its $2 4 millioninvested in companies doing business inSouth AfricaSo. once again, the U of C is not alone intaking more of an interest in South Africanapartheid. Nationwide students and faculty-are becoming concerned enough to activelylobby for education, discussion, and actionon the matterThis is at best an introduction to the issueof racism and the situation facing blackworkers in South Africa Further issues thatneed to be looked into include what divest¬ment will do to this University, what controlstudents and faculty have in pushing for di¬vestment. whether it would help South Afri¬cans for the US to pull out. and what effectuniversities can have on nationw-ide divest¬ment.The Maroon and the Grey City Journalwelcome student, faculty and administra¬tion comments on this very complicatedissue.Company Total Market Value (S) Income ($) Yield <%)Baxter Travenol 1,955,000 180,000 92,210,560 70,080 3.17328,125 8,250 2.51Coca Cola 1,000,938 98,750 2.32Control Data 3,525.000 66,000 1.87Deere & Co. 1,980,000 1.800 9.091st Chicago 3,420,000 211,200 6.18General Electric 7,941,090 308,528 3.89General Motors 2,010,400 215,000 4.66IBM 9,850,000 357,000 3.57Mobil Oil 4,901,488 397,540 8.11Motorola 975,833 87,000 8.7Proctor & Gamble 1,279,503 111,800 4.56Squibb 5,387,500 160.000 3.4TOTAL $46,765,437 $2,272,948Total of allSecurity Holdings $532,865,755 $32,864,693 6.17U of C investment in companies directly or indirectly involved in South Africaas of December 31, 1984.The Maroon received the following letter in the course of planning this issue.OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT GRAY AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEESDear President Gray and members of the Board of Trustees,We of the Ad Hoc Committee for a Free South Africa urge you to reconsideryour past position and join us in working to divest the University’s holdingsfrom banks and corporations which do business in the Republic of South Africa.In South Africa alone, racism is the law. Since 1948, apartheid hasdistorted human relationships and upheld an unjust scheme of economicopportunity. The 80 percent black majority has no political rights; the whiteminority government decides where people work and how people live. Familiesare regularly relocated to desolate rural "homelands," while the heads ofthose families work year-round in the cities for a fraction of the wages theirwhite counterparts receive. Individuals are legally "banned** — their mobilityis restricted, their communication limited, and their existence not mentionablein public. In forcibly maintaining the system, the government incarcerates oneout of every 240 blacks at any given time. The brutally suppressed protests ofthe people of South Africa that we hear about in the United States are only afraction of the turmoil and human misery that apartheid produces.Apartheid uses racial segregation to institutionalize economic exploitation.United States corporations in which the University currently invests activelyprofit from the cheap labor created and maintained by this systern. Thoughapartheid has been universally condemned since its inception, calls for changehave been unheeded by the South African government and the social structurehas only become more entrenched. It is increasingly clear that only completeeconomic and social isolation of South Africa could bring the government todismantle the current system. Momentum is now growing in the United Statesand internationally for divestment. Black leaders in South Africa such asBishop Tutu have backed these economic sanctions. We at the University ofChicago can no longer maintain our support of this racist system and ask thatthere be no business as usual until apartheid is abolished.President Gray, you recently said in an interview that "The University’srole qua University is not that of trying to create social and politicalchange. That’s what we ought to be about as individuals but it’s not the roleof a university as an institution.** Of course, this is first and foremost anacademic institution and we strive to maintain high academic principles.The existence of the institution in which we work, however, depends on a broadersocial and political context. Unless we are aware of and responsible for ourposition in this context we cannot maintain our academic-integrity. We cannotignore the role our investments play in supporting the South African governmentand political economy. The diversity and extent of our coalition for divestituredemonstrates that as students, professors and staff we will no longer disavowthe political and social responsibilities of this "University qua University."Constructive discussion is imperative: we therefore ask that you explainyour current position on divestment to the University community.»Steven K, AmsterdamRalph AustenNeda AzaStephanie BaconZlatko BatistichDaniel BrownsteinJane BurkeFred Y.L. ChiuJean ComaroffJohn ComaroffAnthony CrubaughDennis Dworkin Barbara FerryTommie FryeTara GoodwinPeter HimmelsteinCatherine HoffmanJames JohnsonCoby JonesBruce KingLeo KrugUrban LarsonSteve LeslieNadine L, McGann Bill MaddeyRobert Miles MendenhallDavid MillerPatrick MoxeyJoan NicklinJohn PorterRavindra RajmaneEric RosenthalJohn RosenthalLaura SaltzRafael SanchezSahotra Sarkar Ahmed SehranryLance SelfaBruce Shawy ei mar i ir; kc*Blithe SmithS ta ns f i eld S m i thKatharine B. StevensMohamad Tavako1iTerence $, TurnerPaul WilliamsKenneth A. Wissoker