Billionaire Harvard donor Bill Ackman is calling for the resignation and replacement of the school’s board, which he says is just as much to blame for its problems as ousted president Claudine Gay.
Gay resigned yesterday, finally bowing to calls to stand down a month after her calamitous congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and amid growing accusations of academic plagiarism throughout her scholar career.
In her departure, she was lauded by Harvard Corporation, the university board led by Penny Pritzker, Obama’s Commerce Secretary and sister of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, which said it accepted her resignation ‘with sorrow’.
Ackman, who received his MBA from Harvard in 1992 and now runs the hedge fund Pershing Square, had been among her most vocal critics.
Unsatisfied with Gay’s resignation, he says the school’s leadership is so deeply flawed that it requires a total overhaul.
‘The Corporation Board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure which enabled them to obtain their seats,’ he said, pointing to the fact its members publicly denied the plagiarism claims before investigating them, and rallied around Gay to support her rather than scrutinize her work.
In a 4,000 Twitter tirade, Bill Ackman said the problems with Harvard run far deeper than Claudine Gay
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned yesterday a month after her disastrous testimony
His biggest complaint about the board and the school is its obsession with DEI, which he says has propagated ‘acceptable racism’ towards white people.
‘Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism.
‘While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.
‘You can say things about white people today in universities, in business or otherwise, that if you switched the word “white” to “black,” the consequences to you would be costly and severe,’ Ackman tweeted.
Ackman was deemed ‘racist’ by the NAACP when he claimed Harvard only considered candidates who met DEI requirements in selecting a new president in 2022.
Billionaire Harvard alum Bill Ackman is now calling for the board to stand down too
‘I didn’t say that former President Gay was hired because she was a black woman. I simply said that I had heard that the search process by its design excluded a large percentage of potential candidates due to the DEI limitations.
‘My statement was not a racist one. It was simply the empirical truth about the Harvard search process that led to Gay’s hiring,’ he said today.
Ackman called specifically for the resignation of Penny Pritzker, the Harvard Corporation chair who led the search for Gay, appointed her, and remains in charge.
‘The Corporation board led by Penny Pritzker selected the wrong president and did inadequate due diligence about her academic record despite Gay being in leadership roles at the University since 2015 when she became dean of the Social Studies department.
‘The Board failed to create a discrimination-free environment on campus exposing the University to tremendous reputational damage, to large legal and financial liabilities, Congressional investigations and scrutiny, and to the potential loss of Federal funding, all while damaging the learning environment for all students.
‘And when concerns were raised about plagiarism in Gay’s research, the Board said these claims were “demonstrably false” and it threatened the NY Post with “immense” liability if it published a story raising these issues.
‘It was only after getting the story cancelled that the Board secretly launched a cursory, short-form investigation outside of the proper process for evaluating a member of the faculty’s potential plagiarism.
‘When the Board finally publicly acknowledged some of Gay’s plagiarism, it characterized the plagiarism as “unintentional” and invented new euphemisms, i.e., “duplicative language” to describe plagiarism, a belittling of academic integrity that has caused grave damage to Harvard’s academic standards and credibility.
The Harvard Corporation is led by former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, shown in 2013 with President Obama
Ackman said it was time to restore ‘Veritas’ to Harvard
‘The Board’s three-person panel of “political scientist experts” that to this day remain unnamed who evaluated Gay’s work failed to identify many examples of her plagiarism, leading to even greater reputational damage to the University and its reputation for academic integrity as the whistleblower and the media continued to identify additional problems with Gay’s work in the days and weeks thereafter.
‘According to the NY Post, the Board also apparently sought to identify the whistleblower and seek retribution against him or her in contravention to the University’s whistleblower protection policies.
‘Despite all of the above, the Board “unanimously” gave its full support for Gay during this nearly four-month crisis, until eventually being forced to accept her resignation earlier today, a grave and continuing reputational disaster to Harvard and to the Board.
‘In a normal corporate context with the above set of facts, the full board would resign immediately to be replaced by a group nominated by shareholders.
‘In the case of Harvard, however, the Board nominates itself and its new members. There is no shareholder vote mechanism to replace them,’ Ackman said.
In her bitter resignation letter yesterday, Gay made no mention of her mistakes.
Students protest against Israel at Harvard University on October 14. Many Jewish students said the extended protests and university response to them left them feeling unsafe
Students flew a ‘Harvard Hates Jews’ sign over campus on December 7 – two days after Gay’s testimony
She said instead that she had been the victim of racist threats, and hoped she would be remembered as a ‘a moment of reawakening’.
The board, in its statement, said she had ‘acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them’.
Publicly, Gay resisted criticism for her remarks, insisting she had been misunderstood.
On December 5, she repeatedly refused to confirm that calling for the genocide of Jews on campus counted as harassment, instead saying it was a ‘context-based’ issue.
Only if the words crossed over into ‘conduct’ would it be considered actionable, she told congress.
Her remarks, echoed by the presidents of UPenn and MIT, stunned not just the Republican lawmakers grilling the trio, but the country.
UPenn’s president Liz Magill resigned immediately almost immediately. MIT president Sally Kornbluth, who has avoided much of the heat, remains in her role.
Ackman called for her resignation yesterday after news of Gay’s departure.
For now, Harvard has appointed Alan Garber, the school’s provost, as interim president.
He sat behind Gay during her congressional testimony, nodding in agreement as she gave her remarks.