Report and Statement Indicate that TIAA-CREF Has Divested from Africa-Israel

Statement by TIAA-CREF Announcing Escalated Effort to Oppose Genocide in Darfur
Plans to divest unless target companies improve stance with Sudan by year-end; Calls on other institutional investors to join effortNew York, March 26, 2009 --
Today TIAA-CREF announces a new escalated phase in our continuing campaign to pressure portfolio companies that maintain business relations with the Sudanese government to cease those relations or attempt to end genocide and ease suffering in Darfur. We plan to intensify pressure on such companies and divest from those that fail to take meaningful steps to respect human rights within a reasonable time.

TIAA-CREF believes that members of society have a moral responsibility to confront genocide and crimes against humanity. Therefore we are publicly asking companies operating in Sudan to help alleviate the suffering of its people. With that in mind, TIAA-CREF will:

Seek meetings between TIAA-CREF executives and executives of target companies to encourage them to take positive and meaningful humanitarian steps and attempt to end genocide;
Publicly endorse the U.N.-sponsored Principles for Responsible Investment. Signatories include institutional investors with a combined $2.5 trillion in assets under management with whom we will join to urge companies operating in Sudan to confront human rights abuses; and
Call upon other financial services companies to follow our lead and increase pressure on target companies.
We will evaluate progress within nine months and, if we still hold positions in these companies at that time, we will divest their shares from all accounts if milestones showing significant progress are not achieved, and announce that decision publicly. If target companies - PetroChina, CNPC Hong Kong, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Sinopec, and PETRONAS - refuse to meet with us, we will divest promptly. If they agree to engage in a productive dialogue, we will continue to hold their shares as long as progress continues and as long as portfolio management concerns warrant. If a company takes meaningful steps to ease suffering and attempts to end genocide, we will remove it from our divestment list and continue the dialogue to assure changes occur.

We recognize that genocide and crimes against humanity, whether in Darfur or elsewhere, require a higher standard of response. While we believe that attempts to use our standing as shareholders through quiet diplomacy is the most effective way to influence corporate policies and practices, in cases where companies may substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, we may intensify engagement, raise its visibility or limit its duration if we believe that such action is necessary to cause companies to improve their stance. Even in these cases, we believe that divestment should be considered as a last resort, only after efforts to pressure companies to revisit and change their policies have failed.

TIAA-CREF's Policy Statement on Corporate Governance, available here (PDF), sets a high bar for divestment. In making our decision regarding Sudan, TIAA-CREF considered a number of factors, including the gravity of our concerns in Sudan, the likelihood of successful dialogue with target companies and our conclusion that divestment would have an insignificant impact on the financial performance of our participants' portfolios.

Today's announcement, which is consistent with our policy, continues efforts begun in 2006 to encourage 22 companies to end ties to Sudan or operate responsibly there. To date, 10 of the targeted companies have either discontinued operations in Sudan or committed to humanitarian initiatives, such as improving education, health and water supplies.

TIAA-CREF also engaged with other concerned parties, including Investors Against Genocide, a non-profit organization that asks investment firms to institute procedures to prevent holding investments in companies that substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity. We appreciate the dialogue with these groups and the opportunity to address our mutual concerns.

See Questions and Answers about TIAA-CREF's policy on investment in companies with ties to Sudan.

Bad news, I'm afraid. Like recent BDS "victories" at Motorola, Caterpillar and Hampshire College, the "TIAA-CREF divested from Israel" story looks like yet another divestment hoax. (One of many this year, looks like a pattern.)

Find out more at http://www.divestthis.com.

Jon

Apparently, none other than Zionist hatchet-man Alan Dershowitz, promoted the line that Hampshire College had "divested from Israel". In fact, he started to organize a financial attack on Hampshire College, aimed at depriving it of Jewish money, until the President of the College, Ralph Hexter, and Chair of the Board of Trustees Sigmund Roos, sent Dershowitz himself a letter arguing that the College hadn't taken any action specifically against Israel. (Obscenely, they started the letter with the sentence, "We begin by affirming our high esteem for you, both as a legal scholar and a powerful voice against anti-Semitism." That's like expressing esteem for Joseph Gobbels as a powerful voice against anti-Germanism.)

The problem for the various institutions in dealing with BDS against Israel is that, while such actions have broad support among ordinary people, they are anathema to rich and powerful Jews who can hurt those institutions directly by withholding their own money and indirectly by using their control of the major media to slander them. So they throw a few crumbs to the Palestine solidarity movement, but do their best to mask even those crumbs as something not having to do specifically with Israel.

For these reasons among others, I would argue that BDS, and more direct tactics as well, should be aimed at U.S. businesses that directly, or indirectly through the actions of their major owners, give material aid to Israel.