For the second time in a month, Brandeis University has sold stock in South Africa-related companies found not to be in compliance with the university’s investment policies.
The three companies whose stock sales were announced by Brandeis president Evelyn Handler are Exxon Corp., Chevron and Mobil Corp. The total value of the stocks is approximately $500,000, nearly 20 percent of the university’s holdings in companies doing business in South Africa.
This sale, coupled with last month’s sale of about $200,000 of investments in Reynolds and Reynolds Company, Schlumberger Ltd. and Union Camp Corp., brings Brandeis divestment actions to approximately $700,000 within the past four weeks.
The remaining portfolio invested in American companies doing business in South Africa amounts to about $2 million, approximately 1.5 percent of the university’s $130 million endowment.
“These companies, Exxon, Chevron, and Mobil, are highly rated regarding their compliance with the Sullivan Principles,” Handler said in announcing the divestment action. “There is, however, a very high likelihood that they are not in compliance with another university investment policy concerning corporations or their subsidiaries that provide services to the South African government or its military.”
In 1979 the Board of Trustees adopted a statement of principles to guide the university’s decisions concerning holdings in corporations doing business in South Africa. In those principles, three categories of corporations were identified for monitoring or possible divestment.
One of those categories included corporations or their subsidiaries “that make products for or provide services to the military or police organizations or to any agency of the government of South Africa that are used in a substantial way to implement or enforce the apartheid system.”
Brandeis vice president and treasure Stanley Rumbaugh said that his office will contact other companies in which Brandeis has investments to determine their policies and practices in light of the South African Petroleum Products Act.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
