In an effort to discourage practices of genocide in Sudan, Harvard University has decided to divest its holdings from PetroChina, an oil company with ties to the Sudanese government, according to an April 4th statement from the Harvard Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility.
The statement said the group usually makes decisions based on finances, but human rights violations in Sudan called for extraordinary actions.
“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 U.S. Congress and U.S. State Department have termed ‘genocide’,” the statement said.
The Sudanese government has been engaging in what many consider genocide in the western region of Darfur in an effort toward “forced Arabization,” or “forced Islamization,” according to University of Wisconsin anthropology professor Sharon Hutchinson.
Hutchinson said the Sudanese government does not welcome people it refers to as “black Africans” because it wants the country to be identified as an Arab and Muslim nation and uses local conflicts to use force in the region and engage in ethnic cleansing.
“The government has used this as an excuse to go in very heavy-handedly and tear out a section of the population it doesn’t want,” Hutchinson said.
According to a statement by Harvard President Lawerence H. Summers, the decision is not one that Harvard took lightly.
“But I believe there is a compelling case for action in these special circumstances, in light of the terrible situation still unfolding in Darfur,” Summers said in a statement.
UW student Emily Fischer, co-founder of Action in Sudan, a campus group that aims to build awareness of the situation in Sudan, said incidents like this prove universities should have to disclose their investments.
“By investing in companies who are reaping profits from Sudanese oil wells, universities are fueling conflict and violence in Sudan,” Fischer said. “Tremendous power lies in divestment, which can only occur with disclosure of these investments.”
Fischer said her organization plans to investigate whether any UW investments are in companies doing business with the Sudanese government.
Fischer added UW students are “painfully uninformed” about the situation in Sudan and hopes they will try to learn more about the conflict, which she said includes daily mass rapes and killings.
The idea of divestment is nothing new to UW administrators, particularly because the most recent calls for divestment from a country came only months ago.
UW group Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, is currently campaigning for the university to divest its holdings in companies supplying weapons and equipment to the Israeli army. The group states in a petition Israel routinely discriminates against non-Jews and actively prevents expelled Palestinians, who do not have citizenship anywhere, from returning to their homeland.
Al-Awda member and UW philosophy T.A. Mohammed Abed said companies providing material aid to the Israeli army “enable human rights abuses and war crimes against Palestinian civilians.”
Abed said so far the university’s only response to Al-Awda’s campaign has been a letter from the Board of Regents explaining its reasons for not divesting. However, Abed disagrees with the explanations the board provided.
“The Board of Regents refuses to divest in the face of overwhelming evidence that these companies are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and atrocities,” Abed said. “Their decision is politically motivated; they are not taking their governance responsibilities seriously.”
However, some oppose Al-Awda’s campaign. Elana Berenson, Israel intern in Hillel, said since the Board of Regents has already stated that they will not divest from these organizations, the campaign is futile.
Berenson added Al-Awda can be misleading about its intentions.
“Al-Awda is not interested in promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict, but rather would like to deny Israel its existence as a Jewish state,” Berenson said. “While this is not stated in the resolution per se, there should be no question that this is what underlies everything they do, and they should be more upfront about that.”