Money and Morality, Humanity and Harvard

[gottaB]

“It is not complex…it is not sophisticated. It is not intricate or undiscovered, secret or unknown. It is a clear and simple matter of the inability of intellectually asphyxiated people to summon up the courage for an overwhelming and restless instant of denunciation. We do not possess the sense of moral leverage to rise up and to denounce the evil now committed in our name.”

Jonathan Kozol wrote that in 1975, reflecting on a pervasive sense of impotence on the part of Americans regarding matters of injustice at home and abroad. As the debate over Senior Gift Plus and the Senior Gift rages on, we have seemingly reached a point where the debate is no longer about cold hard facts—but largely about the sense of impotence and disconnect described above. The “critiques” of Senior Gift Plus are sadly enough permeated with a sentiment that, often unbeknownst to those making said critiques, belies a deeper sense of hopelessness and uncritical acquiescence to the status quo. They ask: There are always going to be injustices in the world where our money may be invested, where will the protesting of Senior Gifts stop? This alone is not going to topple the genocidal regime in Khartoum, so why do it? And the most distressing question of all is arguably the most innocent: Why must there be a connection between my unconditional support for Harvard and the atrocities being committed in Sudan? Senior Gift Plus is making me choose between two good things…

The Senior Gift Plus website (www.seniorgiftplus.com) answers these questions at length, but I want to speak on the sense of impotence and disconnect that they all have in common. The incontrovertible fact is that Harvard has invested nearly $4 million dollars in PetroChina Corp., which in turn finances the genocidal Sudanese government. Harvard makes profit off its investment in PetroChina, which is then distributed back throughout the university—perhaps even as financial aid. Therefore, my financial aid may be partially subsidized by direct profits from PetroChina, which funds genocide in Sudan. Now, without my consent, I am indirectly profiting (materially, socially, psychologically, and intellectually) from genocide. The tremendous amount of freedoms accrued to me as a result of being a Harvard student are, by virtue of Harvard’s investment, intimately intertwined with the targeted mass murder of other human beings. So throwing all of the arguments for Harvard’s role as a global leader out the window, I must still object to Harvard’s practices; I cannot, in good conscience, know that there is a strong chance that I am benefiting from, or complicit in, genocide, and not protest it.

There is no ambiguity here. Senior Gift Plus is not making anyone choose between two good things—Harvard University is. If the Harvard Corporation were to divest tomorrow, there would be no Senior Gift Plus. It is the Corporation that has said through its actions that it is not willing to heed the concerns of students, faculty, and alumni about their investment in PetroChina. It is the Corporation that has said through its actions that it is not willing to divest from Sudan (or Burma for that matter) and thus not be involved prominently in the slaughter of human beings. Finally, it is the Corporation that has said through its actions that it is not only willing to carry on investing in PetroChina, but it also thinks so little of the human life at stake in Darfur and of the protests of the Harvard community, that it would double its investments before divesting. This is offensive on its face and deserves the most powerful moral outrage we can summon.