Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who joined the successful call for Harvard’s president Claudine Gay to resign, is reportedly backing a bid by four alumni to join the university’s board of overseers in an attempt to reshape the Ivy League school.
Ackman told Reuters that he has endorsed four write-in candidates: Zoe Bedell, Logan Leslie, Julia Pollak (wife to Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak), and Alec Williams — who have all earned either undergraduate, law, or business degrees from Harvard — in their bid to join the board.
“Harvard needs to change. Bringing fresh young blood onto the board of overseers can help with that,” Ackman said.
The board is Harvard’s second-highest governing body and has the power to approve or reject the hiring of the university’s president. Five board seats are up for election each year.
Students walk through Harvard Yard, April 27, 2022, on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
The board candidates Ackman has endorsed are “talented, accomplished and motivated people, and their candidacy will serve as a wakeup call for Harvard,” the hedge fund manager said. The candidates’ ages range from 36 to 38, and all have served in the U.S. military.
The four candidates will need to collect at least 3,300 signatures from Harvard graduates by the end of January in order to qualify to run for election to the board in the spring, since they are not being nominated by the Harvard Alumni Association.
The candidates stated in a position paper that they want Harvard to protect free speech, protect students from bullying and harassment, and address financial mismanagement, including of the school’s $50.7 billion endowment.
As Breitbart News reported, Harvard was named 2023’s worst school for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Additionally, the endowment’s investments delivered returns of 2.9 percent in fiscal 2023, which deeply underperformed the broader market’s nearly 20 percent gain.
Ackman slammed Harvard leadership for failing to properly address antisemitism on campus following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, which included more than 30 of the Ivy League school’s student groups signing a pro-terror statement in response to the attacks.
The antisemitic instances on Harvard’s campus resulted in nationwide backlash, as well as the klieg lights being shone on Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned last week following a disastrous congressional testimony — in which she declined to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus — and scores of plagiarism allegations being unearthed.
Claudine Gay 30th president of Harvard University, (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Ackman, who has donated about $50 million to Harvard, has also accused the university of mismanaging and wasting some of his gifts. His hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, reportedly oversees $18 billion in assets, and returned about 27 percent last year.
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