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Invest With Social Responsibility, It Can Be A Tool For Good

In 1977, two years after I graduated from Brown University, college students around the country launched a movement against Apartheid. Their campaign focused on divestment: convincingAmerican corporations to sell shares of companies doing business with South Africa's Apartheid government. The foundation of their argument was moral and straightforward, that no one should profit from a system that brutally oppresses people. By the mid-1980s, the divestment campaign became made pariahs of the companies still willing to transact with the Apartheid regime. Reflecting on the movement, in 2010 Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, "We could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime."

Socially responsible investing is rooted in the recognition that money, because it holds power in people's imaginations, can be a tool for accomplishing good.