By Kayvan Zainabadi

Submitted Spring 2008

I started the divestment campaign from Sudan at MIT because I’m one of those people who can’t sit still in the face of mass atrocities. We at MIT might primarily be scientists but we’re not without a social conscience!

The conflict in Darfur began in February of 2003, with genocide officially declared by President Bush in September of 2004. Harvard was the first university to move on divestment, divesting from PetroChina in April of 2005. (Remember that the Sudan “divestment” effort has always been one of targeted engagement leading to the possibility of divestment—that’s why people often talk about achieving divestment from particular companies, not just the region in general).

MIT does not have as strong of an activist culture as Harvard, nor an administration that is particularly responsive to social concerns. Hence it was an uphill battle for us, especially since, unlike at Harvard and other top institutions, there is no standing committee that looks at responsible investment across the endowment. There is, however, an ad-hoc committee that can be convened in special circumstances (it hadn’t been in over ten years). In September of 2006 the Advisory Committee on Social Responsibility re-convened to discuss the divestment issue.

Members of MIT STAND worked to make sure the committee knew there was extensive campus support and that we wanted something done immediately, as the monthly death count continued to rise. In the fall of 2006, the MIT undergraduate and graduate student associations supported resolutions on divestment, and we made sure the topic kept coming up in the school newspaper, conversations with faculty and administrators, and held rallies, a “die-in” and other demonstrations to keep campus presence and momentum.

During that time we came in contact with REC, and through conversations and workshops came to realize that we had an opportunity here to not only support the end of genocide in Sudan, but fundamentally change the way MIT views its responsibility as an investor. Too often single-issue campaigns leave no infrastructure in their wake, and we wanted to make sure that future activists didn’t have to start from square one. With the support of REC we created a proposal for a committee on investor responsibility that would not only consider divestment when appropriate, but ensure the school was voting its proxies every year, ensure mechanisms to evaluate and address community concerns, etc. We see this as an important extension of the divestment work and an opportunity to bring in allies connected to many different social and environmental issues.

In March of 2007 the advisory committee finally met and sent a non-public recommendation to the MIT Corporation, which manages the endowment. In May the corporation announced its intention to divest, and confirmed the divestment had in fact been carried out in September of 2007. This was a major victory for us, but we knew there was more to be done, so we continued to raise campus support for the committee on investor responsibility, getting both undergraduate and graduate resolutions passed, and meeting with administrators. While I am proud to leave the legacy of divestment from Sudan, I hope to not only leave future activists with a good story, but with sustainable infrastructure that will help fundamentally reform the university’s relationship with society.

Kayvan is a graduate student in Chemisty at MIT.