Billionaire and Harvard grad Bill Ackman suggests Harvard president was a DEI pick

Billionaire and Harvard graduate Bill Ackman suggested in a social media post Wednesday that the university’s president had landed her job due to the institution’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, and criticized the practice of narrowing candidate pools by refusing to consider some applicants based on criteria like race and gender.

Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, wrote on X that “someone with first person knowledge” of Harvard’s presidential search had informed him that “the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.” He said that other top schools have likely done the same thing in recent years.

“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,” Ackman wrote. “And it is also not good for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale.”

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Ackman’s comments came a day after he publicly called on Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, UPenn President Liz Magill, and MIT President Dr. Sally Kornbluth to “resign in disgrace” following their appearances at a House committee hearing on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, where all three refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews on their respective campuses breached their rules and amounted to harassment.

Harvard did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment on Ackman’s post regarding its DEI policies and the selection of President Gay.

Several U.S. universities have come under fire for the past two months for inadequately addressing antisemitic protests that have taken place on their campuses since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 and the subsequent onset of the Israel-Hamas war.

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Harvard has faced severe criticism since 34 student organizations signed a statement issued by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups that began by blaming the “Israeli regime” for “all unfolding violence” in the hours after the unprecedented attack.

On November 4, Ackman sent a letter to President Gay voicing his concerns over antisemitism, free speech and the impact of the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (OEDIB) at Harvard. On December 3, he sent a follow-up letter to Gay sharing feedback he had gathered from senior members of Harvard faculty, noting that she had not replied to or acknowledged his previous message.

The Ivy League institution has also faced heat for years over its use of affirmative action in admissions as part of its DEI policies, and it was sued for allegedly penalizing Asian American students due to the practice. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled over the summer that Harvard’s race-based admissions system was unconstitutional.

Ackman, who has been an outspoken critic of his alma mater’s handling of antisemitism on campus since the October 7 attacks, argued in his post Wednesday that the DEI movement has gone too far.

“I have been called brave for my tweets over the last few weeks,” Ackman wrote. “The same could be said for those who called out Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare.”

“I don’t 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 racism for those who questioned the DEI movement,” he continued, adding, “We are all shortly going to realize that the DEI era is the McCarthy era Part II.”

Fox Business’ Michael Dorgan and FOox News’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.