Stanford Would Sell Stock Over S. Africa Sales

Stanford University trustees voted Tuesday to sell the university’s 124,000 shares of stock in Motorola Inc. if the electronics firm resumes sales to the military and police of South Africa.

In doing so, the board of trustees accepted the recommendation of a faculty, staff and student committee that concluded that the university’s $5-million stock investment in Motorola is “socially injurious” and supportive of South Africa’s apartheid policy.

A spokesman for the electronics firm refused to comment Tuesday on the board’s action.

However, last December, Motorola officials said the company had made no sales to South Africa in 1984 and would not resume sales of equipment--mostly communications gear--to the military. They were noncommittal about future sales to the South African police.

University President Donald Kennedy told the board that, “Having failed to receive an assurance that sales to South African police will not resume, we must . . . reinforce our findings--that such sales constitute substantial social injuries (to non-white South Africans).”

William Massy, the university’s vice president for business and finance, said the school will closely monitor Motorola’s dealings with the South African government and sell the stock if business is resumed.

The board’s action comes on the heels of six months of peaceful campus protest of university investment in firms dealing with the South African military and police. Last October, Stanford students voted 2,045 to 485 that the school should divest itself of the Motorola holdings.

Motorola Inc., based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Ill., is a diversified electronics firm with 1984 revenues of more than $5.5 billion and 118.5 million shares of stock outstanding. It is the largest seller of semiconductor products in the world and manufactures a wide range of electronic equipment.

Motorola has been one of the targets in recent months of attempts by the National Council of Churches’ Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The center, in a series of stockholder resolutions, has asked Motorola and other U.S. firms to end sales to the South African police and military.