 "Like some other billionaires, Ackman seems to have taken a right-wing turn in recent years. Reuters")
Billionaire Bill Ackman is making waves again.
The Donald Trump backer has compared America’s prestigious Yale University to Hamas.
Ackman previously attacked Harvard University as well as the media outlet Business Insider.
Ackman, taking to X, said he was asked to write a letter of recommendation for an unnamed friend’s daughter for Yale University.
Ackman said that he would not be doing so and claimed that the Ivy League University “potentially even more dangerous” than Hamas.
“You wouldn’t ask me to write a letter of recommendation for her admission to Hamas. But Yale is no different than Hamas, a cult that abides no disagreement, and a cult certain of its purpose and mission beyond reflection. Yale is potentially even more dangerous. Hamas will be defeated shortly. Yale will continue to send its graduates into positions of power for years,” the post states.
“A recent study at Harvard found that roughly 50% of the students and professors wouldn’t discuss “uncomfortable” topics. An essential life skill is the ability to change your mind. She won’t learn that at any Ivy league school. Their reputations are still so strong that their faculty, staff and graduates all possess the arrogant certainty of religious fanatics,” Ackman added.
“I am sorry to disappoint you. I wish her the best in her search for a school”.
But who is Ackman? Why is he comparing Yale University to a terrorist group?
Impact Shorts
More ShortsLet’s take a close look
Who is he?
Ackman is a hedge fund manager.
He has a personal net worth of around $9 billion, as per Forbes.
The 58-year-old is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.
As per Forbes, the firm, which he formed in 2024, currently manages assets worth $15 billion.
Pershing Square is an investment holding company in which Ackman and his family own a 23 per cent stake.
It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Pershing Square Capital Management has stock in a number of big companies including Chipotle, Hilton and Alphabet.
Ackman went to Harvard University from which he received a Bachelor’s Degree – and then went to Harvard Business School from where he got a Master of Business Administration.
As per Vox, Ackman is known as an activist investor.
This essentially means he buys stakes in companies and with his power calls for changes or attempts to push them through.
Investor Carl Icahn once said of Ackman, “He’s the quintessential example of if you want a friend on Wall Street, get a dog.”
Ackman, speaking to The New York Times, described himself thus, “If I think I’m right, I can be the most persistent and most relentless person in America.”
Ackman is married to ex-MIT professor Neri Oxman – who was once linked to actor Brad Pitt.
They have three children.
Why is he comparing Yale University to a terror group?
Like some other billionaires , Ackman seems to have taken a right-wing turn in recent years.
Ackman has also become a devoted supporter of Donald Trump – endorsing him for president in the 2024 campaign.
Ackman is no longer limiting his activism to investing.
Ackman, who has over a million followers, has sought to inject himself into a number of topics on social media.
Ackman led a public and high-profile campaign against ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay who was plagued by accusations of plagiarism and antisemitism.
The academic career of Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, career came under intense scrutiny by conservative activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.
The Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s governing board, initially rallied behind Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up “a few instances of inadequate citation” but no evidence of research misconduct.
Days later, the Harvard Corporation said it found two additional examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
Gay was also taken to task by her handling of the Israel issue on campus in the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Taking to X before Gay resigned, Ackman wrote Harvard was “unwilling to acknowledge that they made a bad choice of leader” and that they can only restore the university’s status as one of the world’s leading academic centers “when the Corporation board members acknowledge that they made a bad choice of leader”.
“When your CEO has done the indefensible, you must take immediate action to replace her. If you don’t, you become culpable in what was initially only her failures,” Ackman wrote.
He claimed Harvard was refusing to fire Gay because doing so “would look like they were kowtowing to me.”
Ackman also accused Harvard of mismanaging and wasting some of his gifts.
Ackman has criticised Harvard for not doing enough to protect its students from antisemitism incidents in the wake of the October attack by the militant Islamist Palestinian group Hamas on Israel and subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza.
He called for publicly releasing the names of students who blamed Israel and its policies for the October 7 attack and vowed not to hire them.
He also demanded that a student newspaper editor be suspended.
Ackman has also taken aim at the university’s adoption of diversity and inclusion programs he argues stifle meritocracy.
As per Vox, Ackman claims DEI is “not about diversity in its purest form” but rather a “political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.”
He says DEI unfairly paints any “merit-based program, system, or organisation.”
Ironically, Ackman’s own father went to Harvard – a university famous for its legacy admissions.
Ackman has also taken flak from his critics.
Ben Eidelson, a professor at Harvard Law School, told The New York Times that Ackman was an “interloper,”
“We can’t function as a university if we’re answerable to random rich guys and the mobs they mobilize on Twitter,” Eidelson added.
Joshua Sanes, a neuroscience professor at Harvard, said, “He’s using his wealth to bully the university to change their politics in accordance with his political agenda.”
Ackman’s wife has also been accused of plagiarism.
A Business Insider story, published on January 4,, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay’s work to back his efforts against her — but that the organisation’s journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism” by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen sentences and paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars and technical documents in a 2010 doctoral dissertation at MIT.
Ackman, taking to X, wrote a long screed against the outlet.
Ackman complained that it was a low blow to attack someone’s family in such a manner and said Business Insider reporters gave him less than two hours to respond to the accusations.
He also suggested an editor there was anti-semitic. Ackman and his wife are both Jewish.
Ackman said his wife admitted to four missing quotation marks and one missed footnote in a 330-page dissertation. He said the articles could have “literally killed” his wife if not for the support of her family and friends.
“She has suffered severe emotional harm,” he wrote on X, “and as an introvert, it has been very, very difficult for her to make it through each day.”
He also seemed to publicly threaten Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.
Business Insider and Axel Springer’s “liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman wrote on X. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”
Ackman then reached out in protest to board members at both Business Insider and Axel Springer.
That led to Axel Springer telling The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motivation behind the articles and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.
However, Business Insider ultimately stood by its reporting.
CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement saying “there was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story.”
Regardless, Ackman seems to be relishing his time in the spotlight.
“We live in a world in which people are afraid to speak the truth,” he told The New York Times. “I’ve gotten calls from some of the most prominent people in the world who say, ‘I wish I could say what you’re saying.’”
With inputs from agencies