The Stanford Board of Trustees moved to uphold the University’s commitment to socially conscious investment at its meeting on June 9-10. The proposal in question, which was unanimously approved by the Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility & Licensing (APIR-L) in April, encourages shareholder companies to avoid using conflict minerals and conflict mineral derivatives.
The guidelines state that the University will approve shareholder resolutions that ask companies to report the minerals used in supply chains. The conflict minerals, such as tantalite, tin and tungsten, are used in many common electronics. Armed groups in Congo have financed their campaigns through the sale of these minerals.
“The proxy voting guideline is very narrowly drawn and broadly supportive of efforts by leading technology and electronics companies to address the problem of conflict minerals in their supply chain,” said Leslie Hume, the chair of the Board of Trustees.
While students have been working on this move since September, Stanford’s Student Anti-Genocide Coalition (STAND) first proposed the initiative — the first of its kind to be passed by any major university — to the administration in February. It was then approved by APIR-L in a 7-0 vote on April 23 before being sent to the Board of Trustees. Hume would not comment on whether the board voted unanimously.
STAND worked with APIR-L to draft the final resolution’s language, according to outgoing STAND president Angie McPhaul ‘10.
“This is a movement that’s growing, and Stanford is making an early statement,” she said. “It’s significant because we’re so close to Silicon Valley.”
STAND is now working with groups at Yale, Harvard and Georgetown to pass similar initiatives and encourage more academic research on the subject. McPhaul expects the Stanford resolution to “come into play” in the fall.
“It was very clear that the students at STAND had done a lot of work on this,” Hume said, praising their “diligent research.”
Ellen Huet and Jane LePham contributed to this report.