American University’s Board of Trustees has approved a resolution directing its financial managers to divest any holdings in companies that do business in the oil and gas sector in Sudan, and not to make any new investments in such companies. The resolution, announced in a written statement on Friday by the board’s chairman, Gary M. Abramson, follows similar actions by other institutions of higher education this year to protest human-rights atrocities in the African nation’s Darfur region.
Student activism has been credited with many colleges’ decisions (The Chronicle, June 23). Other institutions that have recently announced divestment decisions include the Universities of Pennsylvania and Washington; Smith and Williams Colleges; Brown, Princeton, and Yale Universities; and the University System of Maryland.
