Editor's note:This is part three in a three-part series about the IU Foundation’s investments in companies linked to the genocide in Darfur.\nProfessor Steve Weitzman and departing IU Foundation President Curt Simic could not have taken more different roads to get where they are today. For the past seven months, they have headed opposite sides of a debate about investing in companies linked to funding the genocide in Darfur.\nSteve Weitzman never considered himself an activist. He graduated from University of California, Berkeley, but was never seriously involved with politics. The same can be said for his time as a grad student at Harvard.\nYet Weitzman, an IU Religious Studies professor, saw a connection between the Holocaust and genocide in Darfur and has become a central figure in the debate surrounding IU investment policy. He is pushing the University to adopt a policy of what he calls socially responsible investing, which would require IU’s investment managers to monitor funds and ensure that no money is tied to Darfur.\nCurt Simic, a native Hoosier and 1964 IU graduate, has served IU for 20 years, raising money from donations to fund research, scholarships and academic programs at IU.\nJust 74 days remain until his retirement. Already, his tenure is being celebrated. Late Indiana Governor Frank O’Bannon labeled him as a “distinguished Hoosier,” while others at the University praised him the savior of University fundraising.\nWeitzman contends that IU has a duty to take financial action against the companies invested in the Sudanese government. Simic, on the other hand, says his main loyalty is to IU donors who entrust him with their gifts.\nA legacy to pass\nAs Weitzman read The New York Times about a year ago, a story caught his eye. That story linked Fidelity, one of the companies that provides IU’s retirements plans, to the genocide in Darfur.\nWith his own retirement plan invested through Fidelity, he felt partly responsible for the genocide.\nWeitzman said he has no choice but to take action now. He said one of the lessons of the Holocaust is that those who turn a blind eye are equally to blame as those who commit the violence.\n“By not doing anything, it’s also making a decision,” Weitzman said. “If you don’t respond to this situation, you’re also setting a precedent.”\nThis precedent, he said, could allow humans to carry out genocide in the future. Weitzman moved his retirement funds from Fidelity to TIAA-CREF, the other financial services company available to IU faculty and administrators for retirement investing. TIAA-CREF maintains the Social Choice Account, which targets investments that meet certain social criteria. The returns on that fund are not as high as the ones he received from Fidelity, he said, and with a wife and four young boys at home, money is not something he wants to take lightly.\n“I’ll lose some money over the course of the years,” he said. “But at the end of the day, what am I going to pass on to my kids? I don’t want to pass on to them a world that turns the other way when a genocide is committed.”\nWhile much of the recent divestment discussion has centered around investments by the IU Foundation – the University’s chartered nonprofit corporation – Weitzman and others around the country have also questioned IU’s agreements with Fidelity.\nThe University applauded Fidelity recently for apparently ending much of its indirect ties to Darfur, but some activists still charge that Fidelity remains invested through overseas markets.\nFidelity and TIAA-CREF are the only financial services companies currently available to IU faculty. Faculty members can choose between the companies and invest retirement money in one or both.\nThey also have the freedom to decide the types of funds. Because each of the companies offers many types of investment options, faculty and administrators have the freedom to personalize their portfolios. For example, TIAA-CREF’s Social Choice Account is just one of many options faculty and administrators can choose from. \nWeitzman said the University, as well as faculty, are part of an academic institution that is obligated to maintain a moral conscience.\n“This is not a corporation, and we are not just employees,” he said.\nMutual respect\nWeitzman’s office is small. Worn wooden chairs crowd around a small table cluttered with books, papers and manila folders. Bookshelves are full, and volumes of religious texts cover the room, leaning haphazardly on shelves or sitting in small piles on the floor. An air-conditioning unit obscures part of the only window.\nThree miles away, Showalter House, the headquarters of the IU Foundation, is distinctively corporate. Gray stone walls reach to the freshly polished, wood-paneled ceiling. Sunlight floods through large windows, welcoming visitors and potential donors. Showalter House has doubled in size during the past 30 years to accommodate the skyrocketing level of endowment. \nThrough a winding hallway, behind security-sealed doors, Simic’s office is a symbol of his power at IU. Two winged chairs and a burgundy leather couch welcome visitors into the large office. A grandfather clock rests against one wall and a large, ornate wooden desk fills the center of the room. It’s here that Simic controls huge sums of University dollars. It’s here that Simic transformed the IU Foundation into a mammoth institutional force during the past three decades.\nPart of the time, Simic collects donations from some of IU’s wealthiest alumni. At other times, he consoles students in crisis.\nThe girl’s father was dead – suicide, she told Simic, sitting on the couch inside his office just a few weeks ago. She could no longer afford tuition, and wondered aloud whether Simic could help.\n“I told her we were going to figure something out,” Simic said. He said he spends part of every day helping others.\nSolving these problems at the institution he has loved for decades is Simic’s idea of social responsibility.\nWith about 10 weeks until his retirement, the debate about divestment could be one of Simic’s last.\nNone of this is personal. Both Weitzman and Simic express respect for one another.\nWeitzman’s a “good man,” Simic said, a passionate man. Despite this, Simic said Weitzman’s logic is fundamentally flawed.\nThe $6 million in Foundation investments that have been linked to the genocide is less than 1 percent of the Foundation’s total endowment, and Simic said divestment would have minimal impact on the Foundation. However, he does not want to set a precedent that might allow activists to sway the Foundation in the future. He also said divesting $6 million would never make a real difference in the genocide. He said IU’s proposed divestment would be a “symbolic” gesture, something he wants to avoid. \n“I don’t want to act merely symbolically, either,” Weitzman said.\nWeitzman said when it comes to genocide, all gestures matter. He likens divesting IU’s $6 million to voting: A single vote might seem insignificant. But “voting is not symbolic,” and neither is divestment, he said.\nSimic, sitting in his office with Vice President for Investments Gary Stratten, reiterated that he thinks he has time to take some sort of practical action on Sudan. Many wait for those efforts; he has 74 days left to make up his mind.\nSolving problems is simply a part of their jobs, Stratten and Simic will agree. A few more discussions likely await Simic in what’s been years of triumph and challenge. Stratten smiled at the long-time leader. Ten weeks until he steps aside.\n“But who’s counting?”
Click here to read parts one and two of this series.
