Billionaire Bill Ackman claims Harvard president was hired because of DEI initiative
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has accused Harvard of hiring president Claudine Gay solely because of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative — instead of “identifying the best leaders for our prestigious universities.”
The 57-year-old, who has made a name for himself by publicly announcing that he would refuse to hire students who express anti-Israel views, made the claim as he blasted Gay — as well as the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts🃏 Institute of Technology — for refusing to cond🏅emn calls for genocide on their campuses at a congressional hearing.
“I learned from someone with first-person knowledge of the Harvard president search that the committee would not consider a candidate wh𒅌o did not meet 🍎the DEI office’s criteria,” of the university president, who is black.
“The same was likely true for othe🔥r elite universities doing searches at the same time, creating an even more limited universe of DEI-eligible presidential c💙andidates.
“Shrinking the pool of candidates base🍸d on required race, gender and/or sexual orientation criteria is not the right approach to identifying the best leaders for our most prestigious universities,” Ackman argued.
“And it is also not good forဣ those awarded the office of president wh🎉o find themselves in a role that they likely would not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale.”
Ackman went on to say he has “been called br🌳ave for my tweets over the last few weeks” calling out antisemitism at colleges.
“The same could be said f🙈or thꦐose [who] called out [former Sen.] Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare,” he claimed.
“I don’t think it will be long before we look back on the last few ꦦyears of free speech suppression and the repeated career-ending accusations of racist for those who questioned the DEI movemen🐠t.
“We are shortly going to realize that the DEI era is the McCarthy era ꦑPart II,” Ackman warned.
“History rhymes, but it does not repeat.”
The Post has reached out to Harvard University ꩵand Gay for comment.
Ackman had earlier called on Gay, as well as Penn president Liz Magill and MIT president Sally Kornbluth, to “resign in disgrace” from their positions after they refused to call out the antisemitic protests that have taken place on their campuses during a congressional hearing.
“In short, they s𝔍aid: It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into cond🔯uct,’ that is, actually killing Jews,” he .
“This could be the most extraordinary testimony ever elicited in the Congress, certainly on the topic of genocide, which to remind us all is: ‘the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a paꦡrticular nation or ethnic group with the aim to destroy that nation or group,’” Ackman wrote.
“The presidents’ answers reflect the profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervಌade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed le🎃adership,” he continued.
“They must all resign in disgrace,” he said, adding: “If a CEO of one of our compani🥃es gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the hour.
“To think that these are the leaders of Ivy League institutions that are charged with t🦩he responsibility to educate our best and brightest,” he said.
Ackman later , which read: “Let me help them out here: ‘Calling for the genocide [death] of anyone obviously constitutes harassment.’”
In another post Ackman shared, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, said he was “ashamed” by what he heard the universiꦑty presidents say.
“In my personal opinion, it was one of the most despicable moments in the history of US academia,” , noting that it made him think of his family 🌱who died in the Holocaust.
“The memories of my father’s parents, Abraham and Rachel Bourla, his brother David and his liﷺttle sister Graciela, who all died in 🤪Auschwitz, came to mind.
“I was wondering if their deaths ꦑwould have provided enough ‘context’ to these presidents to condemn the Nazis’ antisemitic propaganda.”
Even the White House spoke out against the university presidents’ testimony.
“It’s unbelievable that t๊his needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” senior communications adviser and deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Amid the backlash, Gay backtracked on her own testimony by saying the university will start to💙 punish calls for genocide.
“There are some who have confused a ♛right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students,” Gay .
“Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile🌳, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
Magill also offered a groveling apology i𝔍n which she appeare💞d to blame Penn’s policies and even the US Constitution.
“There was a moment during yesterday’s Congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our cam♚pus would violate our p🅷olicies,” Magill began the two-minute video Wednesday.
“In that moment, I was focused on the university’s long-standing policies — aligned with the US Constitution — which say that speech alone ♑is not punishable.
“I was not focused on — but should have been — the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violeꦇnce human beings can perpetrate.
“It’s evil, plain and simple,” she said.
