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Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility
Annual Report 2024-2025
Introduction
Since 1972, Harvard University has maintained a pair of committees that were created to
play a central role in the University’s consideration of matters of shareholder responsibility related
to Harvard’s investments in publicly traded companies: the Corporation Committee on Shareholder
Responsibility (CCSR) and the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR).
The CCSR consists of several members of the Harvard Corporation. Acting on behalf of the
President and Fellows, it oversees the consistent application of University policy with respect to
shareholder responsibility, actively considering new circumstances or information that may suggest
the need for changes in policy or practice.
The ACSR is a twelve-member committee made up of Harvard faculty, students, and
alumni. The ACSR is responsible for advising the CCSR on aspects of how Harvard should fulfill
its fiduciary duty as a shareholder. This advice primarily takes two forms: first, the ACSR develops
and edits guidelines on topics relevant to investors when addressing shareholder resolutions
(proxies), to be shared both with Harvard’s external investment managers and the investing public;
and second, the ACSR shares advice on specific shareholder resolutions directed at companies held
directly in Harvard’s portfolio. At the direction of the CCSR, the ACSR also may occasionally be
asked to consider other aspects of Harvard’s shareholder responsibilities.
While the University and Harvard Management Company (HMC) recognize that its external
managers may not necessarily share Harvard’s view on every issue, HMC expects these external
managers to have a robust approach to stewardship and to make the kind of informed voting
decisions on shareholder resolutions that Harvard seeks to achieve steered by the guidelines
approved by the CCSR on the recommendation of the ACSR. HMC considers an external
manager’s stewardship practices related to these guidelines as one of several relevant considerations
in assessing overall performance. The University also makes the guidelines publicly available,
including through reports such as this one, so that other interested investors can make use of them
as they see fit. Developing publicly available proxy guidelines is part of a larger set of activities
intended to intensify Harvard’s engagement with its external investment managers, with companies,
and with other investors on issues of corporate social responsibility.
