![]() ![]() Metz reasoned that universities are not aware of how heavily index or mutual funds have allocated their endowments toward China, an issue that organizations like Athenai aim to address. “As a result of that, investors aren’t getting a fair, adequate, or remotely accurate picture of what the bottom line looks like for that company.” ![]() accounting standards or auditing standards,” the president of the divestment advocacy group Athenai Institute, John Metz, said. investors to know it, they might refuse to comply with U.S. “If Chinese companies are involved in atrocities against Uyghurs and they don’t want U.S. Yet given the poor performance of Chinese equities in the last two years, largely due to governance issues, fiduciary duties and ethical concerns might actually be in alignment. Universities’ hesitancy toward divestment also lies in their need to prioritize their bottom lines in order to achieve their main missions: teaching and research. “That’s the leverage point that universities can exercise.” Asat is “a big proponent of allowing Chinese students to learn about these causes,” she said, noting the tendency for Chinese political elites to send their children to prominent universities in the United States. Bol serves as a member of the Harvard China Fund, which “supports teaching and research on China and promotes Harvard’s presence in China,” according to its mission statement. “It increases ignorance rather than lessening it.” Mr. “I think restricting ties with China is a terrible idea,” a Harvard professor of Chinese studies, Peter Bol, told the Sun. Others see divestment as antithetical to schools’ dedication to raising awareness of international issues. But how often do you hear professors talk about China’s repression so publicly?” Asat urges universities to “apply the same standards that you would apply for other atrocities as you have done in the case of Russia.” She argued that universities are hesitant to divest from China because they fear backlash from the Chinese government: “Professors are very critical of Russia. After Russia invaded Ukraine in March, many schools quickly divested from Russian assets. More recently, campus movements on climate change have pressured schools like Boston University to shift their endowments away from fossil fuels. American universities took a leading role in ending the South African apartheid through the act of divestment. Precedence exists for universities divesting their endowments from entities deemed unethical. No further action has yet been taken by either school. In April, the university was considering reducing its Chinese investments, according to Bloomberg, mirroring Yale’s investigation of its endowment allocations in China. Yet Harvard recently hosted a Chinese Communist Party official at the Harvard College China Forum, a move that was condemned by the prime minister of the East Turkistan government in exile, Salih Hudayar. More than 70 Harvard student organizations from across the university signed a statement demanding his release. Asat’s brother is being held in a Uyghur concentration camp. “I cannot understand how universities that are founded in the values of academic freedom, excellence, and creating a future where everybody has equal opportunity to pursue their dreams, end up in a situation where they would be aiding and abetting repression,” a human rights lawyer, Rayhan Asat, told the Sun. university endowments at the end of the 2021 fiscal year was $821 billion. Murphy’s legislation, the Protecting Endowments From our Adversaries Act, would impose an excise tax on investments in such companies by private colleges and universities with endowments of more than $1 million. Murphy wrote in a recent letter to 15 colleges and universities. “Because colleges and universities have an educational mission and receive the significant benefit of tax-exempt status, they have a moral obligation not to use their endowments to invest in companies that contribute to human rights violations and are detrimental to the national security of the United States,” Mr. While the bill is unlikely to pass in the current Democrat-controlled Congress, it demonstrates to universities that Congress wants to intervene on how they spend their endowments. Universities could be forced to cut their ties with China amid growing pressure from students, advocacy groups, and Congress to dissassociate from the human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs led by the Chinese Communist Party since 2014.Ī Republican congressman, Greg Murphy of North Carolina, is pushing legislation that would require schools to divest from firms listed on U.S. ![]()
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