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The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

University unsure of any Darfur holdings

University officials said they are unsure if the school is invested in businesses with operations in Sudan’s Darfur region more than a month after students began pushing GW to refrain from holding stock in such companies.

Earlier this year, Stanford University decided to divest from companies believed to do business in Darfur such as PetroChina, ABB Ltd., Sinopec and Tatneft.

“Since we have such a wide array of portfolios and stocks, it is more useful to look at the aggregate than specific companies,” said GW Chief Investment Officer Don Lindsey. “It would be very difficult for us to develop any type of specific social responsibility investment policy.” Lindsey said GW’s investment work is outsourced to private finance companies, so he is unsure if GW invests in such companies.

“We have monitored social investment strategies of other universities and will continue to conduct research,” Lindsey said.

Despite similar difficulties, students at Stanford University successfully convinced the administration there to divest from companies that conduct business operations in Sudan.

“The students brought forth the names of companies that caused concern without knowing whether or not Stanford actually held their stock,” said Kate Chesley, a Stanford University spokeswoman and member of the committee that recommended divestment.

“The Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility was very impressed with the research and work the students did in presenting their proposals,” Chesley added. After the proposal was submitted, Chesley said the university was forced to reconsider its investments.

Ben Elberger, a student at Stanford and leader of the divestment effort for Stanford’s Student Taking Action Now Darfur group, said GW has “the responsibility to repudiate genocide, and complicity in genocide, through divestment.”

“Nothing less than full divestment from companies doing business in Sudan should be acceptable,” Eldberger said.

A massive genocide is occurring in Darfur, the western region of the African country of Sudan. According to recent reports, 180,000 people have been killed and more than a million have been displaced.

GW STAND representatives came to a Student Association meeting in mid-October to ask SA members to push for divestment.

“We were very pleased to see our divestment legislation pass in the SA Senate,” said junior Justin Zorn, policy chair of GW STAND.

“Our efforts now are focused on building an overwhelming constituency for divestment,” Zorn added. “We have at least 800 signatures on paper and online, and the movement is growing.”

In October SA President Audai Shakour said he had not discussed divestment with University administrators because he first wanted to meet with Lindsey to talk about GW’s investment status. Lindsey said he has not been contacted by Shakour.

While Shakour could not be reached for comment as to why he had not met with Lindsey, sophomore Casey Pond, Shakour’s vice president of public affairs, said the SA president has been keeping up on the issue.

Pond said Shakour had “brought it up with the administration” but did not have details about whom Shakour spoke with or what specific steps have been taken.

University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said earlier this year that he learned lessons from some universities’ decisions to divest in companies that traded in South Africa in the early 1990s. He was unsure as of last month about whether GW is invested in companies with operations in Darfur.

“It could be a symbolically good gesture, but the long term effects are unknown,” Trachtenberg said.

“After U.S. companies left (South Africa), other nation’s companies were able to move in,” Trachtenberg said. “Some people argued it reduced the effectiveness of U.S. business in the region and to this day, South Africa has found it difficult to attract American companies to come back.”

-Brandon Butler contributed to this report.

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