Pending Legislation
The Sudan divestment campaign, which included the consideration of divestment bills in one-fifth of U.S. state legislatures in 2005, shows no signs of tiring in 2006. Bills introduced in 2005 in New York, North Carolina and Vermont are still pending, and new bills could be introduced in Maryland (where a bill died in committee in 2005) and Massachusetts. In 2005, Illinois and New Jersey enacted laws mandating divestment of state funds from companies doing business in Sudan, while Arizona, Louisiana and Oregon passed laws encouraging divestment, and the California legislature passed a resolution encouraging the state's public pension systems to encourage companies doing business in Sudan to work to safeguard human rights. California's Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) has been studying the issue, meeting this winter with representatives from several companies with major investments in Sudan.

University Update
In the past four weeks alone, Yale and Brown have agreed to divest of some of their assets in Sudan, with Brown pledging total divestment and Yale divesting from seven oil companies and Sudanese government bonds (but retaining the possibility of holding stock in other companies with business in Sudan). Later this month, the University of California regents will meet to discuss Sudan divestment. Schools including Harvard, Stanford, Amherst and Dartmouth have already enacted divestment policies (in many cases choosing to divest of only a handful of companies that are major players in Sudan's oil industry), and students are pressuring the administrations of many other schools to consider divestment.