The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said last week that it would consider divesting from companies doing business in Sudan, but couched its announcement in language that The Boston Globe’s “Campus Insider” found baffling. Instead of an outright commitment to divest, the university said in a written statement that it would “not invest in a company whose actions or expressed attitudes are abhorrent to MIT” and that it would review its securities portfolios and “divest as appropriate.”

Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor and a leader of the Sudan divestment movement, told the Globe that it was the most peculiar announcement he had seen from any of the roughly 50 colleges that have divested from Sudan because of human-rights abuses considered tantamount to genocide in its Darfur region.

Even so, MIT’s statement noted that the university’s action was a departure from its “policy of not speaking with a single institutional voice on matters of public debate not directly affecting MIT’s core mission of education, research, and service.” The University of Chicago cited a similar policy in its decision in February not to divest. —Charles Huckabee