Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted a 3,100-word letter on social media over the weekend that he sent to woke Harvard President Claudine Gay where he slammed her for creating an environment where anti-Semitism could thrive and Jewish students attacked by pro-Hamas activists.
The letter comes after Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis, wounded 5,300+, and kidnapped more than 240 during the unprecedented October 7 attack.
“For the past four weeks since the horrors of October 7th, I have been in dialogue with members of the corporation board, other alumni, as well as students and faculty sharing and comparing our concerns about the growing number of antisemitic incidents on campus, as we wait for you and the University to act,” Ackman said. “Four weeks after the barbaric terrorist acts of October 7th, I have lost confidence that you and the University will do what is required.”
He said that after meeting with Jewish, Israeli, and non-Jewish students and faculty at the Law School that it became abundantly clear throughout the day, based on what he saw, that “the situation at Harvard is dire and getting worse, much worse than I had realized.”
“Jewish students are being bullied, physically intimidated, spat on, and in several widely-disseminated videos of one such incident, physically assaulted,” he said. “Student Slack message boards are replete with antisemitic statements, memes, and images. On-campus protesters on the Widener Library steps and elsewhere shout ‘Intifada! Intifada! Intifada! From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free!’ as they knowingly call for violent insurrection and use eliminationist language seeking the destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Ackman ripped Gay for sending “a clear message that the eliminationist and antisemitic statements of the protesters” were allowed on campus, despite the fact that they could run afoul of the First Amendment because they constitute clear threats “where speakers direct a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.”
He also slammed Gay for the university recently being ranked dead last in the country for supporting free speech after The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Annual College Free Speech Rankings rated gave the school a 0.00 score and said it was the only school with an “abysmal” speech climate.
“I am incredibly saddened to say that Harvard has also become a place where Jewish students are concerned about the threat of physical violence (which likely has a corresponding impact on their mental health) while among other insults, they are forced to sit next to classmates who openly and comfortably post, under their actual names, antisemitic statements and imagery on the student-wide Slack message system with no consequences for their actions,” he said.
He said that Harvard’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging was “an important contributing factor to the problem” and that after reading the school’s DEI statement that it was clear it “does not support Jewish, Asian and non-LGBTQIA White students.”
Ackman then called on Gay to take several immediate steps to begin to combat the problem, including suspending students who attacked a Jewish student on campus; take action against far-left extremists who were chanting for the elimination of Israel and against students that have spread anti-Semitism through Slack channels; reach out to students and ask them to report examples of anti-Semitism they have faced; include disciplinary actions against students on their permanent record so that employers will be aware of their anti-Semitism; create a task force to take on the school’s DEI office; release the results of the anti-Semitism task force’s investigation at the school; and make it clear that free speech is tolerated on campus “but that certain kinds of hate speech as well as fighting words and incitement to violence are not consistent with Harvard’s values or considered appropriate conduct for members of the Harvard community.”
Please see my below letter to the President of Harvard University sent today:
November 4, 2023
Dear President Gay,
I am writing this letter to you regretfully. Never did I think I would have to write a letter to the president of my alma mater about the impact of her actions…
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 5, 2023
