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Howard University
First HBCU to Divest From Sudan
By Christina Asquith
Apr 1, 2007, 21:11
Calling
the human rights abuses in Sudan
“intolerable,” Howard
University’s Board
of Trustees voted recently to cut off all ties with companies doing business in
the war-torn African nation.
This
decision makes Howard the first HBCU to join the growing divest-from-Sudan
movement started by Harvard
University in 2004 and
sweeping across American college campuses.
“Clearly
it’s the right thing to do,” said Howard University
president H. Patrick Swygert. “The situation in the Sudan is
intolerable and has been so for a long time.”
The
decision at Howard, which was made public last week, came down during a board
of trustees meeting in late January following an examination of the crisis and
its devastating effects on the lives of Black African Muslims in Darfur.
As the
student-inspired Divest Sudan
movement has spread across college campuses, there have been a calls for HBCUs
to divest. Joe Madison, a celebrated activist and radio and TV
commentator, led a push at Howard University last year and thinks other HBCUs
must join the cause.
“HBCUs
have a close relationship with countries in Africa,
and with the continent. They have a historical connection. They have educated
post-colonial leaders. But most important of all: they’re African
Americans. So they have a kinship to Africa and a moral obligation to take the
lead on this,” Madison
says.
Madison has
been working on African issues, and Sudan in particular, for years,
leading marches, protests and conversations on his D.C.-based public affairs
radio show.
Divestment
campaigns demand that universities comb through their endowments and portfolio
and sell off any investments in companies, banks or governments doing business
with the offending nation. The monies can be big, with millions of dollars at
stake; although in the case of Sudan,
even such large figures usually represent less than 1 percent of a
university’s overall portfolio.
Most
agree that in order to be effective, the tactic must be adopted by a broad
swath of groups, including international companies and banks. Students,
however, say that the negative publicity associated with their campaign also
effectively pressures politicians and companies.
The
Divest Sudan campaign began in late 2004 at Harvard
University, when the student newspaper
reported that Harvard
University was invested
in companies whose dealings with the Sudanese government helped prop up the
violent regime.
Over
the ensuing months, students at Stanford, Dartmouth,
Yale and others researched corporations and articles and even contacted the
Central Intelligence Agency to compile lists of companies with dealings with Sudan. They
took these reports to the board of trustees at their respective schools.
Thus
far, dozens of other colleges have joined in, including the entire University of California system. However, HBCUs
have been slow to respond. Madison
says he knows why.
“There’s
a lack of knowledge about it. There has not been the intensity on the HBCU
campuses or the organization structure, but I don’t think many student
groups at primarily White institutions have reached out,” he says.
Although
a large country, rich with natural resources, Sudan has dealt with crippling
corruption and mismanagement that has squandered most of its natural wealth.
This has lead to fighting between tribes over food, land, water, and most
recently, millions in international aid.
The
largest nation in Africa, Sudan
sits on the East coast, just south of Egypt
and west of Ethiopia.
Fighting has long reigned between the government in Khartoun and rebels in Southern Sudan. In 2003, a peace agreement was being
brokered between the two groups, when an uprising broke out in the Western
Sudan region of Darfur. The government is
accused of arming the Janjaweed -- the Arab militia -- to crack down on this
uprising by scorching villages and committing mass murder and rape. While some
say the government is rightfully quashing an uprising, others say the Sudanese
government’s vicious crackdown qualifies as genocide.
In the
last three years, an estimated 2 million people have been displaced, and
reportedly between 200,000 and 400,000 people have died. In 2004, the U.S.
Congress declared the trouble a “genocide,” although some
international organizations dispute that characterization. Genocide is a legal
term recognized by international law that implies an effort exists to
“destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group.”
The Howard University
board has written a resolution that it will share with other HBCUs to use as a
model. The resolution says the university will “bar investments in all
companies doing business in the Sudan” and “advise investment
managers and investment consultants of this policy decision and ask them to
refrain from any investment in companies in this sector in Sudan;” and
“require investment managers and consultants to inform the university by
June 30, 2007 of any company in its management portfolio doing business in Sudan.”
“As
an institution that has always opposed such flagrant disrespect for human
rights, Howard University has to use whatever options available to pressure the
government and hopefully bring to an end, sooner rather than later, the
suffering and wanton killing of so many people,” Howard president Swygert
said in a statement.
In
recent years, similar divestment campaigns, including an attempt to pressure
Harvard to return endowment money from the Bin Laden family and a nationwide
divestment campaign against Israel,
both failed. Many say the last successful divestment campaign was 20 years ago
against the apartheid South African government.
U.S.
companies are not legally allowed to work in Sudan,
after President Bill Clinton forced American companies out of Sudan in 1997
to protest their human rights abuses. However, foreign companies rushed
into Sudan
to fill the void, and they are much less receptive to U.S .students campaigns
and global calls for human rights violations. The primary companies targeted
are Chinese oil and natural gas company PetroChina, Swiss engineering company
ABB and Russian oil company Tatneft.
Madison says Howard has shown leadership on the issue, and he hopes that
“more HBCUs will follow suit. That is my hope.”
--Christina Asquith
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