Should Utah also divest for Darfur?

Huntsman closely follows the crisis in Darfur and for months wore a Save Darfur wrist band — but state divestment "hasn't been seriously considered," says Huntsman spokesman Mike Mower, because, as far as anybody knows, only one business with ties to Utah is suspect. (Actually, the governor's office was not aware of the Schlumberger connection until alerted by a reporter.)

At the Utah State Retirement System, which invests $22 billion for teachers, firefighters and government employees, executive director Robert Newman says it's not the state's position to determine the federal government's foreign policy. Plus, he says, "If you start putting other interests ahead of your members', then you're breaching your fiduciary duty."

"I think everybody who believes in motherhood and apple pie and patriotism would, on the surface, say it's a good thing (to divest)," Newman says, but the issue is more complicated than that.

Utah State Treasurer Ed Alter agrees. Divestment is "so indirect and indeterminate," he says, that to divest would be largely a political gesture.

Utah has a long history of not divesting to solve social ills, he says. And even if the state did divest, where would you draw the line, he asks, rattling off a list of problems that include Darfur, Somalia, Bosnia and the Falun Gong in China. "There's always somebody that's oppressed somewhere.... If you start down that slope, there's no end to it."

At the urging of some of its students, Westminster College will be addressing the issue of divestment at its investment committee meeting at the end of the month, according to the college's executive vice president Stephen Morgan.

But college investments are different than they were even 20 years ago, when universities and other institutions divested to pressure the South African government to end apartheid, he says. "It was a lot easier then for schools to take very specific actions." Like a lot of colleges and universities these days, Westminster invests in mutual-type funds, pooling its endowment money with other institutions.

The University of Utah also invests in co-mingled funds. "So we can't just say 'pull out,"' says the U.'s chief investment officer, Jonathan Shear. The U. has urged its fund managers to divest, he says. "But we're not divesting out of the funds because of the (Darfur) issue."

Last weekend, the question of divestment was the hot topic at the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, which has $3.3 billion invested in PetroChina, an oil company that does business in Sudan. (The shareholders voted overwhelmingly against divestment.) In the coming week, activists around the country will focus their nationwide campaign on Fidelity Investments. The mutual fund company is the largest holder of PetroChina stock on the New York Stock Exchange, according to FidelityOutOfSudan.com.

Members of SaltLakeSavesDarfur and the student anti-genocide group STAND will be outside Fidelity's downtown Salt Lake offices from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, urging passersby to call Fidelity and demand that it divest.

Westminster student Randall Ferguson plans to be there, passing out pamphlets calling for divestment. "It's really one of the only tools we have now" to stop the genocide, he says.

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Note: The Sudan Divestment Task Force, a project of the Genocide Intervention Network, has a list of foreign companies "warranting scrutiny." You can see the list by contacting info@SudanDivestment.org.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com