Throughout the ’80s, Brown students became involved in a movement to pressure the University to divest in South Africa. Divestment, also termed “disinvestment,” would enact change through the reduction in flow of external capital to South Africa, thereby undermining apartheid with trade sanctions. South African apartheid was an ideology that gained political footing in 1948. Apartheid enforced a legal system of segregation based on race. As a result, the majority of the population, comprised of nonwhite ethnic groups, suffered.
In a large scale protest on Friday, November 8, 1985, more than 500 students rallied in front of University Hall before the start of the Brown Advisory and Executive (A&E) Committee meeting in order to pressure the committee to set a definite February deadline to determine whether Brown would divest of its holdings in companies with operations in South Africa. The student demonstration was described as “well-organized and impressive” by Andrew Hunt ’51, member of the A&E. As a result, the Brown Corporation voted to divest itself from all companies doing business in South Africa within one year, if they do not comply with the Sullivan Principles, and to review its investment policies in two years (1988).
Nonetheless, Brown’s partial divestment in South Africa continued to be an issue past February 1986. Weeks after the decision by the A&E Committee, four students camped out in Manning Chapel and began fasting to protest the University’s policies on divestment. The University, concerned about the students’ health and its own liability, disenrolled the students, who then stopped fasting and days later re-enrolled. A peaceful confrontation in April 1986 entailed the construction of a shanty on the college green by the Brown Free Southern Africa Coalition, in order to present a “tangible image of the kind of misery and degradation our investments in South Africa are helping to maintain.” The shanty was constructed and brought down a week later with permission of the University. This was part of a greater overall movement at American universities, being just one of many shanties built. Efforts continued in 1987 with a disruption of a Corporation meeting by Students Against Apartheid demanding Brown’s complete divestment in South Africa, resulting in 20 students being put on probation.
“I think it’s a mistake. Brown had a chance to take more of a leading role and they blew it. Two years down the line, there will be a lot more pressure to divest, and we will have to jump on the bandwagon instead of leading it.”
—Matt Carroll ’86, Brown Daily Herald, 2/19/86