Harvard University May Sell Its Stock in Philip Morris

Harvard University is considering selling its $5-million investment in Philip Morris Inc. because of concerns that product-liability suits against cigarette companies could lower the stock’s value, a school official said.

The university already has sold the stock that it owned in other tobacco companies, including American Brands, Brown & Williamson and R. J. Reynolds.

The review is “not being conducted from the standpoint that tobacco stocks are immoral or wrong,” said Walter Cabot, president of Harvard Management Co., which oversees the university’s $3-billion endowment. “We are reviewing the stocks to see if they are of good value and what investment merits they may or may not have.” He spoke in an interview with the Boston Globe on Wednesday.

But Harvey Fineberg, dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health, and Thomas Schelling, director of Harvard’s Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy, called for the university to sell the stock for ethical reasons.

“I think it is very appropriate for a university to dramatize the known scientific hazards of smoking by publicly divesting itself of such stock,” Schelling said.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is to hear what could be a landmark case in cigarette liability suits. Three companies, including Philip Morris, were sued by the estate of a woman who died of lung cancer after smoking for 42 years.

U.S. District Judge H. Lee Sarokin ruled in the case that printed warnings on cigarette packages did not absolve tobacco companies from liability.