The ethics of investment
The University must moderate financial decisions with humane judgement
What links Petrochina, a company that human rights campaigners blame for helping fuel a conflict in Sudan widely described as genocide, and BAE Systems, often accused of contributing to human rights abuses and freed from investigation by the Serious Fraud Office only by the intervention of the British government? The University of York has invested in both.
The link with BAE has been known - and has attracted protest - for some time. Indirect holdings in Petrochina through a pension investment fund are a much newer discovery, one that highlights the importance of the Freedom of Information Act in holding big organisations to account. It’s a shame that the House of Commons no longer feels the need to submit itself to a similar level of transparency.
Investments such as these would be objectionable in any organisation that held pretensions of being ethical. It is disgraceful in this University, which also funds a Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, and boasts of academic researchers who specialise in providing advice on “humanitarian intervention in complex emergencies and peace building”.
Given that they also indirectly invest in GNK Group, yet another military aerospace company with shaky credentials, it would seem that University accountants have developed an unfortunate habit of placing money in the hands of the insufficiently scrupulous. There needs to be a change in the balance of interest over business dealings here. Making money cannot be the sole consideration if it means violating a basic principle of respect for our fellow human beings.
Thankfully, such a change already seems to be occurring. Opposition to current policy has not gone unnoticed and is definitely not going to waste. Setting up an ethical investment committee shows the University at least intends to take responsibility for the wider impact of its financial actions. It would seem that despite some evidence to the contrary, institutions of higher learning are not all about profit these days.
It’s now up to everyone involved with the University to keep caring about its place in the wider world. We have a responsibility to object if we are helping to fund or promote misery and oppression, however indirectly. It would seem previous protests have provided an incentive for change; let’s make sure there is no backtracking and no further excuses.
In future, we must see a real policy of responsible investment—not buying blindly into investment firms and companies with low moral standards, then trying to rectify the situation when somebody kicks up a fuss. Doing the right thing in the first place could, apart from everything else, save a lot of bureaucratic wrangling.
