lxxxii
2.7.08
published on 02/15/07
University of Chicago votes against Sudan divestments
Hayley Tsukayama 
Staff Writer
Breaking with many of its peer institutions, the University of Chicago announced on Friday, Feb. 2 that it will not divest from companies linked to the Sudanese government. According to the student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, the Board of Trustees decided after months of deliberation and student protests that the University will maintain its precedent of neutrality on social and political issues. The Board instead set up a $200,000 fund to support faculty and student research on issues related to the Sudanese conflict.
Many other colleges and universities across the country have chosen to divest from businesses believed to be complicit in the Sudanese genocide in Darfur. This fall, Vassar joined schools such as Brown University and Harvard University in pledging not to invest in complicit companies. Vassar was not investing in any such companies at the time.
The University of Chicago based its decision on the 1967 Kalven Report, which deliberated whether the institution should take action in response to the Vietnam War. Trustees decided against any support or dissent, wishing to keep the campus a place of “free and balanced inquiry.”
Yet many criticize the University for following this precedent, including the last surviving member of the 1967 drafting committee, John Hope Franklin. Franklin spoke against using the Kalven Report to justify inaction; the Darfur crisis, he insisted, qualifies as an “exceptional instance.”
In a letter published in the Maroon on Feb. 6, University of Chicago students Michael Pareles and Aliza Levine of Students Take Action Now: Darfur (STAND) admonished the decision for granting “tacit approval” of the genocide. The group also protested at President Robert Zimmer’s open-forum meeting on Feb. 13.
Divestment as a form of protest gained popularity in the 1970s and 1980s to fight the apartheid in South Africa. The lack of institutional support is sometimes thought to have been the catalyst for the fall of the country’s minority-rule system.
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