Letter-writing campaign for divestment begins

Students will mail letters today to the University of California
president and treasurer asking them to investigate the
university’s financial holdings and relinquish stocks held in
companies that do business in Sudan, if such investment is revealed
in their investigation.

Those participating in this week’s letter-writing
campaign, organized by the Darfur Action Committee, are concerned
with the systematic killings of Sudanese in the country’s
Darfur region, and believe that divestment can be an effective tool
in persuading the country’s government to change its
policies, said Bridget Smith, a fourth-year international
development studies student.

The crisis in Darfur, considered a genocide by the U.S.
Congress, has raised international criticism of the Sudanese
government, which many reports consider complicit in the killings
of civilians in the region.

Adam Rosenthal, a second-year law student at UC Davis and the
student regent designate for the UC Board of Regents, said it is
important to know if the university holds investments in Sudan.

“We have a responsibility that at least our books are
clean of (the Sudanese government’s) horrific
policies,” he said.

Last week, Rosenthal wrote letters to the UC Treasurer David
Russ and President Robert Dynes and the members of the investments
committee on the UC Board of Regents requesting a report of the
multinational corporations in which the UC invests and which do
business with the government in Sudan. Should such investment
exist, he also asked that the treasurer recommend to the regents
that they divest from some or all of these corporations.

But Rosenthal said he understands such an investigation is no
easy task.

Divestment is also a difficult policy for the UC to adopt
because the university does not invest in companies individually,
but rather holds stocks in an index fund comprised of a broad range
of companies determined automatically by their size and nature in
the market, said Trey Davis, a spokesman for the UC Office of the
President.

“It’s difficult to remove certain companies from an
index without destroying the financial rationale for the
index,” he said.

Earlier this month, Harvard University announced its decision to
divest financial holdings amounting to $4.4 million in PetroChina
Company Limited because of the company’s ties to the
government in Sudan.

“This decision reflects deep concerns about the grievous
crisis that persists in the Darfur region of Sudan, and about the
extensive role of PetroChina’s closely affiliated parent
company, China National Petroleum Corporation, as a leading partner
of the Sudanese government in the production of oil in
Sudan,” said the university’s Corporation Committee on
Shareholder Responsibility in a statement. The committee
recommended to the university that it divest its holdings.

Edmond Keller, a UCLA political science professor, said he
expects other universities will also divest, creating a
“domino effect.”

If the divestment campaign is widespread internationally it can
cause significant changes in Sudan, Keller said.

Allowing more peacekeeping forces to protect citizens in Sudan
would be one significant goal that divestment efforts can
potentially realize, he added.

In 1985 Keller served on a UC committee that recommended the
system respond to the apartheid in South Africa by divesting some
of its holdings in companies that operated in the country.

This week’s letter writing efforts are part of an ongoing
campaign by the Darfur Action Committee to spread information on
the crisis in Darfur and to call on officials to make changes.

In previous weeks, students have addressed letters to California
senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and their respective
representatives asking them to sign on to the Darfur Accountability
Act, which will increase diplomatic pressures on the Bush
administration to address the crisis in Darfur.

Both senators and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., have co-signed
the legislation, though there is no indication that efforts made by
student groups prompted them to do so.