Author: Daniel AF

The student group attempted to form the committee after it discovered several unethical firms in which the endowment was invested. This included $12 in the tobacco industry and $3.2 in Disney, which contracts international sweatshops.

The fact that Conscious Consumers could find out where the endowment was invested and how much money went to each sector is significant. Swarthmore will no longer disclose the amount of money invested in particular industries.

Also significant was the group’s discovery of the ban on ethical divestment and the explanation Swarthmore offered for the ban at the time. A Phoenix article from the time reports:

Conscious Consumers is also questioning one of the mandatory guidelines included in the Endowment Presentation to the Board of Managers. Section VII of the book states, “As a matter of policy, the Investment Committee manages the endowment to yield the best long term financial results, rather than pursue long-term objectives.” But Suzanne Welsh asserts that although the guideline exists, it does not preclude social objectives from being pursued in addition to financial objectives. However, the evaluation of these objectives would have to be a decision made by the entire community, not by the Investment Committee alone. “The guideline was created because it is not the Investment Committee’s job to make the decision of which social objectives to pursue. This is simply a process statement,” said Welsh.

First, I want to note that the only publicly available copy of Swarthmore’s full investment policy is the document referenced by Conscious Consumers, which was written in 1997. And I only knew to search the archives for Endowment Presentation to the Board of Managers because it was referenced in this article. This should underline the difficulty members of the Swarthmore community face in trying to learn even the most basic information about the ban.

Second, Welsh’s comment completely undermines the way that the Board uses the ban today. According to her, the “ban” simply serves as a “process statement” by clarifying the responsibilities of the Investment Committee. When the policy says, “the Investment Committee manages the endowment to yield the best long term financial results, rather than to pursue other social objectives,” it only refers to the investment committee. The policy does not mean that the Investment Committee or the Board gets to overrule the rest of the Swarthmore community when the community wants divestment, as it so clearly does.

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October 14, 1993

Post author By Daniel AF
Post date August 9, 2021

Swarthmore seeks reinvestment in South Africa following the end of apartheid

In making the case for reinvestment in South Africa, President Al Bloom stated:

“As I expressed to the faculty and to the student body and to the Board, I believe the College should respond to Nelson Mandela’s call to begin again to invest in companies which do business in South Africa. Such a move would both be a visible sign of our support for the constructive directions which are being pursued in South Africa and would free the college to invest in ways it deems most appropriate to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibility to guarantee the best education it can to this and future generations of students. The original decision to divest resulted form a community expression of moral outrage at the Apartheid system and I believe the decision to discontinue that divestment must also be a decision that represents the collective commitment of the the community.”

The ban on ethical divestment makes Bloom’s statement ring hollow. How could Swarthmore claim to “support” the post-apartheid government while maintaining a policy that would have kept the College invested in apartheid? How could the decision to reinvest represent “the collective commitment of the the community” if the community was kept in the dark about a policy banning divestment?

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February 8, 1991

Post author By Daniel AF
Post date August 9, 2021

South African apartheid divestment activists return funds held in escrow to Swarthmore

In January of 1986, Swarthmore fined students who occupied the president’s office to demonstrate for divestment from apartheid South Africa. Members of the community helped to pay for the fines and secured a deal with the administration whereby that money would go to an independent account, to be returned to the College only if it fully divested.

Swarthmore agreed to fully divest in March, though it delayed starting the divestment process until 1989.

In February of 1991, Christine Scott ’88 and Anne M. Blackburn ’88, managers of the independent account, donated the funds to the endowment, having felt that Swarthmore had satisfied the terms of the agreement.

Unbeknownst to Scott and Blackburn, the Board of Managers would secretly adopt a policy banning any future divestment that same year (the exact date of the ban’s adoption is unknown). The Board instituted the ban in direct reaction to the South African apartheid divestment campaign.

Would Scott and Blackburn still have donated the money if they knew about the ban?

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1991

Post author By Daniel AF
Post date August 9, 2021

The Board of Managers adopts the ban on ethical divestment

The ban, part of the endowment fund’s “Statement of Investment Objectives and Policies,” states: “As a matter of policy, the Investment Committee manages the endowment to yield the best long term financial results, rather than to pursue other social objectives.”

Students involved in the fossil fuel divestment campaign began referring to this policy as “the ban” after the Board repeatedly cited it to dismiss their demands. The Board has also used the ban to block other campaigns, including

Divestment from arms manufacturers (2001)
Divestment from companies involved in the Israeli apartheid state and occupation of Palestine (2009, 2019)
Ending the ban (2018)

Little public information about the ban and its adoption exists. The date of the ban’s adoption is not known. The Board did not offer a rationale for instituting the ban because it did so in secret. Even the investment policy which contains the ban is not publicly available.

Almost everything known publicly about the ban comes from explanations of the policy by administrators and Board members. Those explanations are short on details and sometimes contradictory.

(find more swat sources about this b/c, of course, the ban itself isn’t available nor is contemporary sources about its adoption).

https://sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu/divestmentdocuments/2020/10/05/swarthmore-college-endowment-fund-statement-of-objectives-and-policies-1997/

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