When trustees ignore genocide

By my count, Penn has condoned genocide for exactly a year. It started in March 2005, when United Nations representative Francis Deng spoke here about Sudan's annihilation of citizens living in its Darfur region.

"Government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape," read one U.N. report released last year.

"Estimates of the death toll range from 100,000 to 400,000," it added.

A few days after Deng spoke, then-Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Kevin Collins called on Penn to divest itself of holdings in companies doing business with Sudan. Penn doesn't tell the public in which companies it invests, so Collins couldn't know whether Penn had money in Sudan-related corporations, like those that refine and buy Sudanese oil.

But that only made matters simpler. If Penn didn't have money invested, all it had to do was announce a policy saying it never would. Such a symbolic gesture would have strengthened an increasingly powerful divestment movement that already includes Harvard, Yale, Brown and Stanford universities, as well as the University of California system and Amherst and Dartmouth colleges.

And if Penn did have money invested in those companies, its new policy could have helped impede genocide. After all, in 2000 Sudan announced that it would use oil revenues to buy arms -- arms which have since been used to kill Darfuris. In 2001, Sudan spent more than 60 percent of its oil revenue on the military.

Clearly, then, to invest in oil companies that work with Sudan, like PetroChina Co. Ltd., is to facilitate genocide. Yet in March 2005, Penn trustees didn't do a thing. No divestment announcement, no policy, no statement. And a year later, they still haven't done anything.

"Institutions don't tend to change unless they have to," Collins said. "Because the University doesn't list its holdings, it's very difficult for any organized group to push them to divest."

One group of students won't give up. They call themselves Penn STAND -- or Students Taking Action Now: Darfur -- and they're part of a network of 120 such groups across the United States.

This week STAND is launching a campaign to convince trustees to announce divestment at their upcoming May meeting.

"Several other schools like Penn have had something -- so just based on that, it seems like common sense that Penn would have something invested in the Sudan," said Samir Sonti, a former DP reporter and current STAND divestment co-chairman. "But then again, there was Amherst."

Amherst is a great example for Penn, since it also doesn't release information on holdings. In fact, when Amherst voted to divest itself in February, the public found out that Amherst actually had no direct Sudan-related investments at all.

But Amherst's vote proved historic because it helped bolster those pushing the University of California system to divest itself, which that school system eventually did a month later. And the University of California had tens of millions of dollars invested in Sudan-related companies.

Moreover, Amherst's decision affected third-party fund managers. Amherst did have a relatively small sum indirectly invested in Sudan-related companies through such fund managers. But as part of its vote, Amherst urged its managers not to invest in Sudan, mounting additional pressure on them to divest themselves.

That pressure is paying off. Just recently, Barclays Global Investors created Sudan-free index funds. So Penn's trustees have a great opportunity at their May meetings. They can announce divestment and support a growing movement to stop genocide. Alternatively, they can continue to do nothing and condone genocide. The choice is theirs.

Or is it? Two years ago, the trustees established the 12-person Social Responsibility Advisory Committee, which counsels the trustees about ethical investing and when morals should take priority over finances. This month, the committee released its most recent report, which advised the trustees to divest Penn of Sudan-related companies.

It would be silly for the trustees to ignore a group that they created. On another level, it would also be bad policy, since the committee has addressed trustees' potential concerns about divestment. For instance, it is only targeting companies whose money flows primarily toward the Sudanese government and not to its poor citizens.

In addition, the committee is targeting companies that ignore the genocide. Like the Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., whose vice president said, "The shadows of Darfur don't affect us."

I hope the trustees won't say the same in May.

Gabriel Oppenheim is a College freshman from Scarsdale, N.Y. Opp-Ed appears on Fridays.

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