Gathering Undergraduate Opinion on Divestment from the Sudan

[Andrew Lukmann]

Fellow Undergrads,

-Please give feedback by this Wednesday at Noon to ua-president at mit.edu-

Later this week, the Advisory Committee to the Corporation on 
Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) will once again meet to discuss the 
topic of divestment from foreign companies doing business in the Sudan 
in light of the Darfur Crisis. Though MIT's holdings in pertinent 
companies are small, the committee is charged with recommending to the 
Executive Committee of the Corporation relevant actions (if any), 
possibly including divestment, active or passive engagement or total 
disengagement. Over the past few months, the committee has investigated 
prior divestment campaigns at MIT and the current efforts by other 
universities across the country to divest.

The situation in the Darfur has been identified by the European Union, 
the U.S. State Department and the United States Congress as genocide. 
Major media sources report that at least 200,000 people have been killed 
and in excess of 2.5 million displaced since early 2003. A UN Commission 
reported that "government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate 
attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced 
disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual 
violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur." It also 
found that "most attacks were deliberately and indiscriminately directed 
against civilians."

Though there are obviously issues of precedent to consider when moving 
to divest holdings, it is my opinion that there are certainly moral 
absolutes that have the potential to transcend these concerns. I want to 
represent the full breadth of student opinions on this issue, so please 
reply to me (ua-president at mit.edu) or write to mit-talk at mit.edu to 
provide feedback. If you have any particularly important testimony to 
present (personal experience, detailed information) I can likely get you 
invited to a committee meeting as well.

Please submit your feedback by Wednesday at noon. Though this likely 
will not be the last opportunity to provide feedback on this issue, the 
more information I have going into this next meeting, the better.

For information from the NY Times on the Sudan, visit: 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sudan/index.html

Yours as always,
Andrew Lukmann
UA President