Harvard Backs Directors In Spring GM Proxy Fight

Harvard will definitely vote with the General Motors management if a group of Washington lawyers supported by Ralph Nader presses its promised "proxy fight" against GM, George F. Bennett '33, Treasurer of the College, said yesterday.

Bennett said that the decision was reached at a Monday meeting of the Board of Overseers which considered a report on Harvard's investment policies by Lewis M. Finfer '72 and a letter from Harvard-Radcliffe Young People's Socialist League asking Harvard to support the Nader group.

"As a matter of procedure, we can be more persuasive by being friendly than by getting into a proxy fight and trying to snap the corporate whip," Bennett said.

Bennett revealed the decision yesterday in a meeting in downtown Boston where he and James Shattuck, assistant treasurer of the College, discussed Harvard's investment policy with Finfer and representatives of YPSL, Harvard Ecology Action Coalition, and the Moratorium Committee.

Finfer-who arranged yesterday's meeting-has sent a letter to every member of the Overseers and the Corporation asking Harvard to support insurgent stockholders in the GM controversy and in stockholder campaigns against two other companies-Commonwealth Edison of Chicago and Boston Edison-in which the University holds stock.

"You underrate [GM's] concern aboutthe environment," Bennett told the six-student representatives. "I have a high degree of respect for the management of General Motors. I think they are concerned with the environment," he said.

"Conporations have communicated what they have done about pollution very poorly," Shattuck said. "This doesn't mean that they haven't been making any effort. They just didn't think anyone was interested in reading these reports."

Harvard owns 287,000 shares of GM common stock.

Earlier this week. General Motors announced that they would not put the Nader proposals on the ballot for their stockholder's meeting in May.

If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approves the management's ballot, the Nader group-called "Campaign to Make General Motors Responsible"-will probably begin a proxy fight, asking shareholders to mail ballots to Campaign GM instead of the General Motors management.

The major "Campaign GM" proposals would:

add three representatives of the public to GM's Board of Directors. The group's nominees for the three seats are Betty Furness, special assistant for consumer affairs under President Johnson. Rene Dubos, a University of Chicago environmentalist, and the Rev. Channing Phillips, a Washington, D. C. civil rights leader.

change the GM charter to prevent the corporation from engaging in practices "detrimental to the health, safety, or welfare of the citizens of the United States..,"

set up a "shareholder's committee" to study GM's impact on the country, including its effects on air pollution and national transportation policy.