Campuses: Voices Against Apartheid

The argument that institutions should divest themselves of stock in companies doing business in South Africa claimed a new and hard-won supporter last week. Columbia University, site of a three-week student blockade over the issue last spring, became the first major private educational institution to , announce full divestiture. The stock involved has a market value of some $40 million, or a little more than 4% of Columbia’s $900 million endowment. The change in policy, said a university spokesman, came about “in view of recent developments in South Africa.”

Columbia’s action spoke louder than the generally scrabbly turnouts on campuses for National Apartheid Protest Day. Despite a summer of violence in South Africa, student organizers were unable to duplicate last spring’s mass demonstrations. Though about 2,000 gathered in Manhattan, Columbia’s hometown, only a small group attended a teach-in on apartheid at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At Connecticut’s Wesleyan University, some 100 protesting students were arrested. Even the University of California, Berkeley, turned out only 1,000 protesters. A student leader blamed midterm exams for the lack of enthusiasm.