Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

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СКАЧАТЬ on Africa, which enjoyed the support of black fraternal and sorority groups, the National Council of Negro Women, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, registered their objections to apartheid. In 1962, the committee issued a resolution calling for black Americans to protest the mistreatment of Africans abroad, and three years later made recommendations to the federal government regarding apartheid.80 The United Nations general assembly also brought apartheid to the forefront in the early 1960s. Black politicians like Congressman Charles Diggs brought up the issue of apartheid to U.S. political officials who had previously turned a blind eye to South African policies.81 Tennis star Arthur Ashe was another who loudly protested against apartheid, as did the scholars John Henrik Clarke and C.L.R. James. Abroad, scholars in Britain opposed apartheid in a boycott of South Africa.82 Other anti-apartheid activists included the American student/athlete members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), which was led by former athlete and educator Harry Edwards.83

      The members of the OPHR were not the only students to oppose what they viewed as immoral policy in South Africa. In 1968, black Princeton students, in alliance with white radical students, protested against Princeton University’s investment policy with regard to South Africa. In doing so, the student activists preceded the American collegiate anti-apartheid movement by nearly two decades.84 Furthermore, they set the stage for what would become a major battle for justice within the U.S. Congress in the 1970s and 1980s. Princeton students envisioned their anti-apartheid campaign as part of the international struggle for black freedom and the Pan-Africanist movement.

      In April 1968, students at Princeton proposed that the university not invest any future funds into companies associated with the apartheid-sanctioning governments of South Africa and Mozambique. While students at Yale demanded a Black Studies program, and those at Columbia demanded that their university show more respect to its black neighbors in Harlem, students at Princeton insisted that the university divest $127 million from its financial portfolio.85 The students recognized that they had peers from nations like Tanzania and Kenya where Africans had won their independence from European colonists. Those African students interacted with black students born and reared in the United States and informed them of the human rights struggle that was occurring in southern African nations.86

      Armed with the knowledge of history concerning segregation and apartheid, the students took action. ABC members and other anti-apartheid student demonstrators marched at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs—a school named for a man who reinstituted the American version of apartheid in the civil services—and caught the attention of university officials. Princeton authorities, aware of protests elsewhere that escalated to violence and destruction, attempted to defuse the rising controversy.

      University officials formed a committee that included administrators, faculty members, and students to study the impacts of the school’s investments and the efficacy of divestment. In January 1969, the committee issued a report that claimed that the university had no investments in companies that “directly support the governments of southern Africa, or that have substantial operation in the region.”87 Furthermore, the committee reported, “the designated companies [that the students had identified] derive an average less than one per cent of their sales and profits from southern Africa.”

      The student members of the committee refused to endorse the report, which explained that divesting might cause the university to lose the equivalent of 10 percent of its educational budget. Doing so, according the committee report, would necessitate the curtailment of programs such as urban studies and “important programs that make a direct contribution to the cause of racial justice such as the active recruitment and granting of scholarship aid to more black students, the establishment of closer working relationships with organizations in New Jersey concerned with racial problems, and other programs such as the summer program for the disadvantaged youth.” Asserting that divestment would be mostly a “symbolic gesture” anyway, the report suggested that such a gesture “would be a heavy price to pay.”88 What did a university creating leaders in the land of the free continuing to do business with apartheid-supporting nations symbolize?

      The report placed the student opponents of apartheid in a moral conundrum. If they chose to push forward with their protests, then they might have won a victory for the image of the university and against what they perceived as evil. At the same time, by continuing their efforts they risked losing funding that was used to attract and cultivate potential black students. If the students abandoned their push against the university’s financial ties to apartheid South Africa and Mozambique, then they became implicated in a relationship they believed was immoral. Then, if the university acceded to the students’ requests, it risked the financial stability of the institution. Essentially, the authors of the report constructed a scenario in which only black people abroad or black people domestically could be helped, but not both at the same time.

      Presenting a potential slippery slope regarding the negative impacts of divesting, the report speculated about what type of precedent divesting might set. It stated: “If a policy of using moral, social, or political criteria in investment in a number of different instances, including ‘munitions makers,’ companies with ‘unfair’ labor practices, companies dealing with discriminatory unions, companies with investments in Portugal, companies doing business with communist countries, etc.… No company is completely free of connections that might be morally-politically-socially objectionable to a significant part of the University community.”89 Such a burden would be too much for an educational institution, argued the report. The problem with the argument was that Princeton was not just an educational institution but also a mill for the nation’s future leadership. What lessons were those leaders to learn from the report’s stance on the university’s tie to apartheid?

      On the anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, the ABC led a boycott of classes and held an action. To point out the death that occurred because of white imperialism and antiblack racism, ABC members carried a coffin with a red, black, and green flag draped around it to the center of campus and held a silent vigil. They were growing tired of negotiating freedom with white decision makers.

      By March 1969, the Princeton students (mostly black), who formed the group United Front, wondered if their university could afford to be a moral institution with regard to racism. President Goheen attempted to address the concerns of the students. As a matter of policy, he stated that Princeton “will not hold securities in companies which do a primary amount of their economic activity in South Africa.”90 Goheen noted that doing so constituted an “unusual commitment on the part of this, or indeed any, university.” The president also acknowledged the important contribution of the black graduate students, who sat on the committee to study the apartheid issue. He then pointed to the fact that the faculty voted overwhelmingly to reject gifts to the university from companies “doing a primary amount of their business in southern Africa,” and that he would recommend that the trustees adopt the policy. In addition, he pledged that Princeton would work with other educational institutions that stood against apartheid and followed through on Goheen’s pledge.

      Finally, the president reassured the students who worried about the original report’s suggestion that changes in the university’s investment policies could lead to cuts in funding for the recruitment of black students. He expressed great respect for the “depth, intensity, and nature of concerns which moved the United Front” and the other black students who pushed the issue. “We can and will do more to enable all our students—black and white—to study and learn from the Afro-American experience. We can and will extend our current efforts to add more black faculty, students, and staff to the University community. We can and will support and encourage the efforts of students, faculty, and staff to work with local community groups on problems of mutual concern.”91 To bolster the president’s proclamations, in early March 1969 the Princeton faculty voted to approve an Afro-American Studies program for the university.92 As the story about the university’s ties to apartheid became national news, Goheen’s approach to the stirring controversy was open to scrutiny.93

      Although СКАЧАТЬ