John Gulick wrote:
... PS Patrick, I understand the merits of tactical interventions and tactful prose, but really... social investment funds? This coming from someone who has compellingly ripped to shreds the Grameen Bank and micro-credit hoaxers?
And also CSR - a group of progressives have a special issue of Development&Change (Inst for Social Studies, The Hague) off the press this month with exactly that in mind, critiquing investment 'funds' which claim that Corporate Social Responsibility is making progress (my humble riff on the topic will soon be posted here: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?5,75 )
But I actually said 'diversifying into social investments', not social investment funds. And there I'd perhaps suggest Swarthmore invests its endowment in cooperative limited-equity housing in Chester (a nearby ghetto hosting the reserve-army-of-unemployed and Swarthmore's low-paid service staff) or in West Philly, or in worker-owned enterprises (Philly spawned some of the earliest initiatives in the 1970s wave), or in some other lower-earning but more appropriate green technologies... the weird Quaker tradition there meant that no tobacco, alcohol or firearms were allowed in the portfolio, but my friend Dennis Brutus had to do lengthy sit-ins and protests to get them to even consider SA apartheid disinvestment 25 years ago.
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