In 1977, Leon Sullivan of the Philadelphia Zion Baptist Church created the Sullivan Principles to improve workplace conditions and structures to uplift Black workers in South Africa. The principles were a voluntary business code, which companies paid into. They had to fill out a questionnaire and allow inspectors into their factories for review. The Principles were celebrated by the business world as a means of signaling their commitment to end the increasingly unpopular Apartheid regime without sacrificing their profits. Zeb Larson argues, “Business leaders saw social responsibility as a way to protect free-market capitalism from communism by addressing certain communist criticisms, such as poverty.”¹ Through educating and uplifting destitute Black workers, the Principles would effectively maintain capitalism as the ANC was calling for redistribution and democratization.

In 1987, Welsleyean’s president invited Bryn Mawr’s president to hear Sullivan speak at the college in Middletown, Connecticut.² Sullivan himself was initially in favor of full economic disengagement with South Africa, and after the Sullivan Principles weren’t entirely effective walked back to his initial values of disengagement.

Bryn Mawr, however, was staunchly committed to the doctrine of corporate responsibility. They saw their stockholder status as a form of corporate constituency, a vote in the company’s proceedings.

In 1978, The Bulletin noted how Bryn Mawr co-sponsored a resolution by local churches to demand “Eastman Kodak halt sales of aerial surveillance film to the South African Military.” This resolution was a petition to the corporation itself. The College felt as a shareholder they had the power to demand policy changes. They saw petition as more effective than divestment. Bryn Mawr’s presidential assistant Joseph Johnston stated Divestment “is an ineffective response.. It’s dramatic, and it’s a gesture that cleanses an institution of its previous involvement, but you lose your leverage to influence the behavior of corporations.”³ Casting off divestment as a strategy and then holding out for gradual change through established and profitable channels was a strategy that sought to present Byrn Mawr’s complacency on positive pro-democracy terms, despite Apartheid’s fundamentally undemocratic groundings.

In Decoding Corporate Camouflage (1980), Elizabeth Schmidt investigated the effectiveness of the Sullivan Principles, finding that they advanced “gradualism and utility– as a tool of corporate propaganda.” The Principles’ strategy neglected to stop US investment in key sectors of Apartheid like computers and energy. Further, in addressing workplace segregation, corporations maintained de facto segregation by “changing black-only cafeterias to spaces for ‘’hourly workers”.⁴

Bryn Mawr was deeply embedded in the neoliberal ethos of the late 70s and 80s, which sought efficient strategies and leadership on the new expanding frontiers of the free market. The Bi-Co Social Action Caucus, an anti-racist, feminist, internationalist, and intersectional student group, criticized Bryn Mawr’s production of docile neoliberal subjects. They saw Bryn Mawr as a deradicalizing and professionalizing space, as cartoonishly depicted in the organization’s 1976 pamphlet, “Alive and Kicking.”⁵ Bryn Mawr’s ‘mission’ of education was not grounded in human solidarity, but rather was to create better leaders to reinforce global capitalism under kinder smiles.

Bryn Mawr, as well as many other colleges, would engage in such “shareholder activism.” “During the 1980s, over 350 U.S. Companies had direct investment in South Africa. 176 of these firms received at least one shareholder resolution concerning its involvement in South Africa.”⁶

To the tune of their passive stance on Eastman Kodak in 1978, Bryn Mawr would adopt an equally slow moving reform strategy in 1985. That year, it was estimated Bryn Mawr had $8 million of investments in South Africa, within 21 corporations. The Board of Trustees proposed a watered down divestment plan, spanning over 24 months into 1987 based off of a company’s compliance with the Sullivan Principles. With this decision, the trustees established a set of social responsibility targets, the chief concern of course being “a corporation’s fair employment practices for women and minorities.”⁷ The Owlification of Divestment would not be accepted by students.

1. Larson, Zeb. “The Sullivan Principles: South Africa, Apartheid, and Globalization.” Diplomatic History 44:3 (2020): 479-503.
2. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. MARY PATTERSON MCPHERSON PAPERS. Correspondence, Subjects 9/10, Se-Sw. Special Collections Dept., Bryn Mawr College Library Box 59 of 82. Folder: South African 1984-88. Campbell, Colin. Letter from Wellesley college president to Bryn Mawr President Pat McPherson. March 12, 1987.
3. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. STUDENTS BOX LISTS 9I ISSUES ON CAMPUS/STUDENT ACTIVISM Folder: Divestment S. Africa. The Bulletin Sunday, December 3, 1978. “Colleges rapped for S. African ties” Sam W. Pressley.
4. Larson, 495.
5. Social Action Caucus records (HCQ.003.034) Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.
6. BROYLES, PHILIP A. “THE IMPACT OF SHAREHOLDER ACTIVISM ON CORPORATE INVOLVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA DURING THE REAGAN ERA.” International Review of Modern Sociology 28, no. 1 (1998): 1–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41421629.
7. HCV: President’s Papers Harry C Payne 1987-1988 So-U Box 6. Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA. Folder: South Africa: Wesleyan University South Africa Research Consortium, 1985-1988.