In a recent development, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has alleged that Harvard University appointed President Claudine Gay due to its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) standards.
Ackman, who has previously stated that he would not employ students expressing anti-Israel sentiments, shared his views on a social media platform.
"I learned from someone with first-person knowledge of the Harvard president search that the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI offices criteria," Ackman wrote. He further suggested that this was likely the case for other elite universities conducting similar searches, thereby narrowing the pool of potential candidates.
The 57-year-old financier argued against the practice of limiting the selection of candidates based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. "Shrinking the pool of candidates based on required race, gender and/or sexual orientation criteria is not the right approach to identifying the best leaders for our most prestigious universities," he stated. Ackman also expressed concern for those who secure the position of president due to such criteria, suggesting that they may not have obtained the role without such factors influencing the decision.
Ackman, who has recently been vocal about antisemitism at universities, compared those who challenge the DEI movement to those who stood against former Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. "I dont think it will be long before we look back on the last few years of free speech suppression and the repeated career-ending accusations of racist for those who questioned the DEI movement. We are shortly going to realize that the DEI era is the McCarthy era Part II. History rhymes, but it does not repeat," he wrote.
In a separate post, Ackman called for the resignation of Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth. He criticized their refusal to condemn calls for genocide against Jews on their campuses during a congressional hearing. Quoting their responses from the hearing, Ackman wrote, "In short, they said: It depends on the context and whether the speech turns into conduct, that is, actually killing Jews."
He further argued that their responses were indicative of the "profound educational, moral, and ethical failures" at elite educational institutions, attributing these failures to their leadership. "They must all resign in disgrace. If a CEO of one of our companies 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 the responsibility to educate our best and brightest," Ackman added.
Later, Ackman shared posts from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Musk's post read, "Let me help them out here: Calling for the genocide [death] of anyone obviously constitutes harassment." Bourla's post criticized the presidents' testimony as one of the most despicable moments in the history of US academia, recalling his family members who died in Auschwitz.
Following the backlash, all three presidents retracted their statements from the hearing. Axios reported that the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school board asked President Magill to resign on Thursday evening.
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