Last night, the Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing (APIR-L) held a town hall meeting in Cubberley Auditorium to discuss its role in the University’s endowment investment decisions and to answer any questions about specific investment cases.

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John Shen

The second annual Advistory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing discussed the role of community input in securing decisions that protect social welfare.

Linda Kimball, director of investment responsibility for APIR-L, began the meeting with a historical account of how the panel was created as an ethical compass for the University’s investment decisions. Following Yale’s controversial investment in companies manufacturing arms for the Vietnam War, Stanford created the panel to advise the Special Committee on Investment Responsibility (SCIR) and the President of the University on potentially controversial investment issues.

Kimball then introduced the enhanced APIR-L Web site that now contains historical documentation of all previous University investments and provides a digital platform through which concerned community members may submit their objections about ongoing decisions.

Current issues range from concern over University relations with companies employing sweatshops to businesses involved in Israel and Palestine.

A representative from the Asian American Activism Committee voiced concern over Stanford’s possible involvement with companies that benefit from illegal sweatshop labor.

“As far as I know, there are likely to be very few, if any, licenses that contract with manufacturers with inappropriate labor practices,” Director of Business Development and panelist Susan Weistein said.

Another audience member questioned the University’s investments in companies such as Bechtel and Caterpillar, which have connections to the West Bank.

Though the members of the panel admittedly had no specific knowledge of such dealings, they stressed that concerned community members can use APIR-L’s Web site to submit requests for review. Kimball emphasized the fact that such input regarding responsibility in investments from the community is vital to the panel.

“We can spend a lot of time and money setting up all these venues for dialogue, but if no one uses them, all the effort is wasted,” she said.

Panelist Alan Acosta, associate vice president and director of University Communications, responded to the concern that these online requests are merely given a cursory once-over.

“Don’t think that all requests are simply judged by what is written on a sheet of paper,” he said. “The panel has a tradition and practice of meeting with people.”