Citing Darfur, Harvard targets firm
Backs divestiture from oil company
Harvard University said yesterday it is divesting from Sinopec Corp., citing grave concerns about the Chinese company's involvement in oil production ventures with the Sudanese government.
In the past few years Sudanese government-backed militias have been accused of committing widespread massacres and rights violations in the Darfur region of Sudan, sparking a wave of student activism at Harvard and other universities across the United States.
The move marks the second time that the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing board, has moved to divest from a Chinese petroleum company operating in Sudan. The divestment is expected to reduce criticism from student activists who accused the board of betraying them when Harvard divested from
A Harvard Corporation statement yesterday said the university was concerned with Sinopec's role in oil production in Sudan.
''Oil is a critical source of revenue and an asset of paramount strategic importance to the Sudanese government, which has been found to be complicit in what the US Congress and US State Department have termed 'genocide' in Darfur," the statement said.
Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers released a statement calling the move the ''right thing to do." He reiterated the Harvard Corporation's position on divestment, affirming that ''Harvard rightly maintains a presumption against divestitures but this situation is extraordinary."
As of its most recent SEC filing, for the last quarter of 2005, Harvard held 134,050 shares in Sinopec. The SEC filing reflects only shares of the company purchased in the United States. The stock closed on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday at $62 a share.
No one at the New York offices of Sinopec Corp. would comment on the divestment. Sinopec Corp. is a subsidiary of China Petrochemical Corp., Sinopec Group, which is controlled by the Chinese government. The Chinese Embassy had no comment.
Student activists said they were pleased with the decision but still want more aggressive actions. Harvard initially was considered a leader in divestment from firms doing business with Sudan when it stopped investing in PetroChina and other universities followed suit.
But Harvard, student activists said, has fallen short because it has not established a policy against all investments in companies working with genocidal regimes. Chad Hazlett, a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said that since Harvard's first divestment last spring, other universities have adopted far more elaborate human rights criteria governing investments, while Harvard has made its divestment decisions on an ad hoc basis.
''I hope this action doesn't distract attention from the need to create a broader framework for divestment," Hazlett said. ''The decision calls this situation uniquely pressing. I would argue that genocide is always uniquely pressing."
