A case in point is your inquiry related to BAE. While we do not disclose specifics of our investment portfolio, I can confirm that your inquiry relates to a fixed-income account that was widely diversified, but since mid-2003, the University no longer owns those securities.

BAE Systems has been criticized for dealings with, among others, Suharto’s Indonesia and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and has been investigated on charges of alleged corruption on multiple occasions.

Additionally, details surrounding the foreign financial account or accounts held by the University in Zimbabwe, first revealed by WPRB on Tuesday, have yet to be disclosed.

In her Wednesday evening e-mail, Cliatt instead suggested that:

members of the campus community with interest in these issues typically would not need to know whether the University is invested in Zimbabwe today to know whether they feel the University should be invested in Zimbabwe. And looking at a list of investment holdings on a given day can’t tell you what we’re invested in today. It tells you only what we were invested in at the time the list was published.

Tomorrow afternoon, at the invitation of the University, WPRB will sit down with Andrew Golden, the president of the Princeton University Investment Co. (PRINCO), to discuss how the University makes and monitors investments, why Princeton has stopped disclosing printouts of investments–as was a standard practice during the late 1990′s up until 2002–and why consideration of non-economic factors in investment appear only to be considered after concerns are raised by the campus community.

[Editor's Note: If you have questions you feel WPRB should ask Mr. Golden, send them along to tips@wprb.com before 1:30 PM tomorrow]

Our full program on Zimbabwe, and on Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs)– where companies, individuals and foundations can invest funds at very low tax rates, usually at the expense of their home nations’ tax revenues– aired this afternoon and will be posted online tomorrow evening. Roughly one third of Princeton’s declared foreign financial accounts, as of June 2007, are situated in OFCs.

For years BAE supplied military equipment to Zimbabwe, a relationship that began in the 1980’s when the Zimbabwean Air Force acquired 12 fighter planes from British Aerospace, BAE’s predecessor.

In 2000, the British government imposed an arms embargo against Zimbabwe, yet replacement parts for BAE-manufactured planes arrived as late as 2001, in apparent violation of sanctions, according to a UN report. Those components were allegedly supplied by Bredenkamp, who received £20,000,000 between 2003 and 2005 from BAE, The Financial Times reported this July. The payment served as “the first detailed evidence of a financial relationship” between Bredenkamp and the company. Both have both repeatedly denied violating sanctions.

Beyond its dealings in Zimbabwe, BAE Systems has run into trouble elsewhere for questionable business practices. As of June 2007, The Guardian reported that the company had been investigated for alleged corrupt dealings in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Czech Republic, Romania, Chile, South Africa and Tanzania. In past decades, the firm counted the brutal Indonesian dictator Suharto among its clients.

For its part, Princeton’s dealings with BAE apparently extended beyond investments: in July 2001, one month after the bonds were purchased, Defense Daily reported that Princeton and BAE, along with 11 other universities and corporations, were collaborating on a “lucrative” $76,000,000 research project commissioned by the Army Research Laboratory.

University Spokeswoman Cass Cliatt, responding to questions about University investments in BAE Systems and in Zimbabwe generally, told WPRB in an e-mail sent Monday, that “as a matter of policy, the University does not disclose the specifics of investment portfolio or its return drivers.”

As with Princeton’s more recent investment in Zimbabwe revealed by WPRB yesterday, the University would not confirm or deny whether it currently has holdings in BAE Systems and would not say what internal standards, if any, Princeton employs in selecting and vetting its investments.
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Stay with WPRB as we prepare additional reporting on the subject to be aired this Thursday on 103.3 FM and on the web at www.wprb.com at 5PM. Among our guests will be Andrew Meldrum, who wrote for The Guardian and The Economist about Zimbabwe for 23 years until he was kicked out of the country in 2003.

Update: More information on how Princeton makes investments.

Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt told WPRB News in an e-mail this evening that “as a matter of policy, the University does not disclose the specifics of its investment portfolio or its return drivers.”

“The University in 1997 adopted guidelines for socially responsible investment under which action is taken after “considerable, thoughtful and sustained” campus interest and widespread consensus that action should be taken. The first step in that process is for the issue to be raised by a segment of the campus community and to my knowledge, the process has not been initiated,” Cliatt wrote.

What internal standards, if any, Princeton employs in selecting and vetting investments in corporate stock or foreign assets were not addressed by Cliatt.

Mugabe’s rule has drawn harsh international criticism ever since a violent policy of land redistribution plunged Zimbabwe into severe food shortages and economic crisis in 2002.

In 2005, the United States government called Zimbabwe an “outpost of tyranny” on par with Burma and Iran, the Zimbabwean government implemented an urban “clean-up” plan that the United Nations estimates left 700,000 people homeless and, by year’s end, the UN’s humanitarian chief had concluded the country was “in meltdown”. Conditions in 2006 and 2007 worsened with inflation reaching all-time highs and widespread imprisonment of union leaders and political activists (several of whom alleged they were tortured while in state custody).

This summer Time reported that, in the run up to Zimbabwe’s June elections, Mugabe’s “brutality before the vote resulted in the deaths of about 100 Zimbabweans, the detention of some 2,000, injury to 10,000 and the displacement of more than 200,000.” Just last week, The Guardian reported that the country was on the “brink of collapse”.

Stay with WPRB as we prepare additional reporting on the subject to be aired this Thursday on 103.3 FM and on the web at www.wprb.com at 5PM. Among our guests will be Andrew Meldrum, who wrote for The Guardian and The Economist about Zimbabwe for 23 years until he was kicked out of the country in 2003.