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Bill Ackman has never met a fight he avoided. He usually just kept them focused on Wall Street.
Now, the billionaire hedge fund manager behind Pershing Square Capital Management has reinvented himself as a kind of public defender of plagiarism, Harvard’s leadership, his wife’s academic reputation, and American universities. All these issues are far more central to the country’s culture wars than to making money, although the fight against anti-Semitism on campuses is being waged.
Ackman says he has no problem participating in such crusades because “with success comes responsibility.”
“When you see something wrong in society, you want to do something about it,” Ackman said in an interview with CNBC late last week. “People who have a lot of money and resources can sit on a yacht and that’s fine. They can live their lives and no one is going to criticize them.”
“I want to be able to look back and say that I helped solve a lot of problems,” he continued. “Even if you don’t know it now, I’m a fixer.”
read more: Who is Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who used corporate raiding tactics to oust the president of Harvard University?
How these issues should be addressed and whether hedge fund managers are really the right people to solve them is up for debate, but Ackman has attracted his fair share of critics. .
There have also been accusations of plagiarism, and some have accused him of racism in his efforts that led to the resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first black president. Some say he is a hypocrite for claiming it is unfair that similar allegations have been leveled against his wife, former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Neri Oxman.
Ackman denies that her anti-gay campaign is motivated by racism, but says her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in workplaces and schools (which is why she took this job) He said he believed that the only reason for this discrimination was against white people.
Whether or not all of this is eating into Ackman’s investment decisions, his hedge funds have performed well in recent years, with his Pershing Square Holdings returning 26.7% net of fees in 2023. , slightly exceeding the S&P500 SPX.
His spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The five crusades Ackman is currently working on are:
Harvard University Board of Trustees
Mr. Ackman, a graduate of both Harvard University and its business school and a major donor, changed leadership of the storied Ivy League school shortly after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis. I started exploring. He said protests at Harvard and other universities supporting Palestinians had an anti-Semitic tone and that schools were not doing enough to make Jewish students feel safe. Ta.
Gay and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before Congress, which critics said was a weak answer to the question of whether “calls for the genocide of Jews” on campus are permissible. Mr. Ackman stepped up his election campaign.
When conservative activists scrutinized Gaye’s academic work and found instances of suspected plagiarism, Ackman became a vocal voice in the movement to have her removed. After weeks of the school board supporting her, Ms. Gay abruptly announced her resignation on January 3.
Mr. Ackman is now leading the fight against Harvard’s Board of Regents, supporting the write-in calendar of four dissident members. It’s a move straight out of his strategy as an activist and investor.
Related: Opinion: Hey, billionaires! Stop giving money to Harvard.
business insider
Shortly after Mr. Gay’s resignation, business news website Business Insider published multiple reports detailing allegations of plagiarism in doctoral dissertations and other academic works by Mr. Ackman’s academic wife.
In a very public battle on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Ackman accused Business Insider of engaging in an anti-Zionist smear campaign, saying his Israeli-born wife was not a fair target. , because she said it wasn’t his efforts to banish gays or involved in his business.
He claimed the publication did not give him and his wife sufficient time to respond to the charges before posting them online. Oxman said he made several attribution errors in his academic work and apologized, but Ackman insisted those errors did not rise to the level of plagiarism. (Gay and her supporters have defended her work in similar ways.) She also called several top managers at Business Insider and its parent company, German media conglomerate Axel Springer SE. He said he had filed a complaint.Additionally, he activated KKR
KKR
,
Private equity investor who is the largest owner of Axel Springer.
Following Ackman’s vociferous objections, Axel Springer issued an unusual statement saying the company had asked Business Insider to review how the article was put together, but Business Insider He said he stands by his article. A few days after the review began, Axel Springer said he had concluded that there were no problems with the way the article was handled.
“Business Insider is welcome,” Ackman said, strongly hinting that he and his wife might sue the site.
“We will respond with a formal complaint, which will take several weeks to prepare,” Ackman said. Posted on Sunday X. “Let me be clear: a complaint is a lawsuit.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Just as he tried to banish gays from Harvard, Ackman has also turned his attacks on MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
The calls for his ouster followed his performance in Congress in early December alongside Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth McGill and others. McGill resigned soon after, and Gay resigned a month later, leaving Kornbluth as the last president.
“So, Sally?” Mr. Ackman wrote of Mr. X shortly after Mr. Gay resigned earlier this month.
He similarly calls for Kornbluth’s work to be run through plagiarism-checking software.
president joe biden
Ackman last week donated $1 million to a political action committee working with Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, in his high-profile campaign against President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. , frowned.
Ackman said he likes Phillips’ moderate stance, believing Biden won’t defeat former President Donald Trump even if he secures the Republican nomination. Ackman said Friday that Phillips, 54, is a much better fit for president than Biden, who is 81 and “past his prime.”
Phillips has floated potential cabinet positions should Ackman win.
massive plagiarism
In line with his fight to expel gays from Harvard and his wife’s plagiarism allegations, Ackman has vowed to run the work of many scholars at Ivy League schools through plagiarism detection software.
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