Show Schools sell their tobacco stock CPS Schools nationwide will soon be selling off shares i in tobacco companies smoking anti-smoking activists maintain Both Harvard University and the City University of New NewYork NewYork NewYork York recently announced they would prevent their endowment endowment endowment endow endow- ment funds from investing in tobacco stocks in the future In the first flushes of victory smoking anti-smoking activists predicted such divestment would soon become as common commonas as schools selling shares in companies that do business in segregationist South Africa The campus divestment movement in turn generated enough political pressure to alter the United States' States policy toward the government of South Africa the American Committee on Africa maintained Its totally inconsistent to invest in the leading preventable cause of death and disease said Brad Krevor executive director of the newly formed Tobacco Divestment Project in Massachusetts Harvard under fire for years for its holdings in tobacco stock apparently decided to sell its shares last September and completed the sales in March Harvard President Derek Bok announced the sales May 18 in a letter to three students who had been demanding the school divest from firms that make cigarettes and other tobacco products In reaching its decision the endowment fund was motivated by a desire not to be associated as a shareholder with companies engaged in significant sales of products that create a substantial and unjustified risk of harm to other human beings Bok said in his letter But it remains unclear whether Harvard's decision to sell tobacco stock can be extended to less direct forms of invest invest- ment Its patently absurd for medical schools to have endowments endowments endowments endow endow- ments in tobacco said Krevor |