The State - News from June 10, 1986

One of three Berkeley candidates running on an anti-apartheid slate won election to Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, the prestigious 30-member advisory body that decides the university’s educational policy. Gay W. Seidman, a graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and former editor of the Harvard Crimson, won one of five open seats over candidates who had been chosen by Harvard’s alumni association. Seidman and two other Harvard graduates in Berkeley ran on a platform urging that Harvard divest $400 million in holdings in companies that deal with South Africa. The board opposes outright divestment, and several members had expressed concern over the Berkeley slate’s candidacy.