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Billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman called on the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to resign “in disgrace” Tuesday night—getting quick backing from Elon Musk—after the academic leaders testified at a contentious congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.
In a high-profile congressional hearing, the presidents of three of the nation’s top universities acknowledged that Jewish and Israeli students have felt unsafe on campus since October 7 and said their schools were taking action to fight antisemitism.
But at times the three leaders — from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — did not define what kinds of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel speech could be formally disciplined on campus.
When New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik asked directly if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct, all three presidents said the answer depended on the context.
In a post on X, Ackman, the CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, accused Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Penn President Liz Magill of exhibiting “profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed leadership.”
The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?
The… pic.twitter.com/eVlPCHMcVZ
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 5, 2023
Ackman linked to a video of conservative Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who asked in Tuesday’s hearing if “calling for the genocide” of Jewish people violates the three universities’ code of conduct or policies on bullying and harassment.
In her testimony, Gay responded that such speech can violate the Ivy League’s code of conduct “depending on the context” if the speech is “targeted at an individual.”
Kornbluth said such speech on campus would be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe,” while Magill said “if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” adding that labeling speech as harassment or bullying is a “context-dependent decision.”
Ackman, who has repeatedly criticized Harvard leadership and called for some student protesters to be suspended amid rising tensions on campus following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, argued in his post on X that antisemitism has “exploded on campus and around the world” because “of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context.”
Stefanik, in her line of questioning at Tuesday’s hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, also called for Gay’s resignation, arguing the university has been “corrupted by its apparent desperation to appease the far-left.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), in a post on X Wednesday morning, called on the presidents of all three universities to resign, citing their answers to Stefanik’s question, and arguing their responses were “disgusting.”
Ackman’s social media post Tuesday night was re-posted early Wednesday morning by billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, who responded: “Calling for the genocide [death] of anyone obviously constitutes harassment.”
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