Campus input sought on investment responsibility principles

The Board of Trustees and the campus Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing (APIRL) are asking for the input of the campus community on Stanford’s policies and procedures regarding investment responsibility.

The APIRL, consisting of students, faculty, staff and alumni, will be conducting outreach in the coming weeks to former panel members, groups that have asked for the university’s endowment to divest from certain companies, and others in the campus community who have expressed interest in investment responsibility issues.

In addition, input can be provided using a feedback form on the web. That web page also offers additional context regarding the role of the Stanford endowment and its relationship to the academic mission of the university.

Stanford has had a Statement on Investment Responsibility since 1971, amended a number of times, setting forth the commitment of the Board of Trustees to the responsible investment of the university’s endowment. Last fall, the board announced that it would be reviewing the statement and the operational procedures associated with it.

The board’s Special Committee on Investment Responsibility asked the APIRL to take the lead in conducting outreach to the campus community and collecting input.

“To formulate a better set of guiding principles and operating procedures, we need input from across the breadth of the Stanford community,” said APIRL Chair Margaret Levi, professor of political science and director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

The Board of Trustees also announced that it would not be accepting requests for review of investment responsibility issues during the 2017-18 academic year while the evaluation is under way. The board’s goal is to present by fall 2018 a new Statement on Investment Responsibility and related procedures on investment responsibility issues.