The Nation - News from Sept. 7, 1986

Pressure from government, business and special interest groups is threatening Harvard University’s independence, the school’s president warned near the end of a 350th anniversary celebration. “We are not corporations, not instruments of national security, not militant bodies anxious to force our vision of social justice on the world,” Derek Bok told a crowd estimated at 17,000 in Cambridge, Mass. Anti-apartheid groups, including one that forced the cancellation of an anniversary dinner Friday, have demanded that Harvard divest $410 million they said was invested in firms doing business in South Africa.