Advocacy at ASU has a rich history of students, faculty and the surrounding community rising up and taking action against societal oppression.
When immense racial injustice was occurring in South Africa during the 1980s, the Arizona Coalition Against Apartheid pressured the Arizona Board of Regents to decree divestment from companies doing business with the region. Because of the coalition’s dedication, ABOR mandated that ASU and UA divest $3.4 million from said companies in September 1985.
What happened in Arizona is an example of socially responsible investing (SRI), or avoiding investment in firms with business strategies that bring harm to people, communities and/or the surrounding environment.
Twenty-five years later, students nationwide are demanding once again that universities uphold social justice by divesting from businesses that perpetuate human rights violations.
Since President Michael Crow took office in 2002, the ASU administration has sought to become a New American University, which calls for the University to “be socially embedded” and “transform society.” A university’s investment is a reflection of its values, and ASU is overdue in the creation of an advisory committee dedicated to human rights and social responsibility.
Ideally, the committee would consist of ASU faculty and students who have immense experience working with human rights to examine investments made by the University and the ASU Foundation, which controls $731 million. Because accountability, integrity and transparency are three values upheld by the ASU Foundation, it is reasonable for a committee of experts on social responsibility to evaluate the University’s investments.
This semester, the ASU Coalition for Human Rights (ASUCHR) met with Senior Vice President of University Student Initiatives James Rund to set up a committee for SRI, similar to the University Committee for Monitoring Labor and Human Rights Issues that has existed for years at UA.
However, Danielle Bäck, an officer in ASUCHR who met with Rund Nov. 5, said Rund curiously backpedaled on plans to create a committee after months of progress. Rund said the administration feels no need to create a separate organization on an implicit issue because there are already representative entities in place for students.
At a separate lunch with the W. P. Carey School of Business Deans on Tuesday,, a business student asked Dean Robert Mittelstaedt about SRI at ASU. Mittelstaedt, who is also a fiduciary in the ASU Foundation, replied that, “social investment is a weak criteria” because there are too many considerations in evaluating social responsibility. Based on moral relativism taught in ethics courses, the dean’s excuse for not wanting to address the roots of societal oppression is impermissible.
Resistance to SRI from ASU administration leaves many students, including myself, wondering: Where’s the social embeddedness? Where is the societal transformation? In a state like Arizona, where our policy makers condone racism, sexism, classism and everything in between, it is imperative for students at Arizona’s public universities to rise up for a just future.
University administrations in Arizona and the Arizona Board of Regents should respect the student community, for it is this world we will inherit. As former Regent Edith Auslander, who introduced the divestment order in 1985, said, “It’s important to understand that the money was such a drop in the bucket in the total picture of investments in South Africa, and ABOR’s divestment would be a symbolic gesture that could demonstrate anti-apartheid sentiment.”
It is time for ASU to catch up with UA and other universities by creating a committee committed to socially responsible investment, even if it is a symbolic gesture in a larger portrait.
Send your real talk to Athena at asalman3@asu.edu
