Bill Ackman Demands Harvard’s Board Resign in 4,000-Word Screed Blasting University for ‘Racist’ DEI Policies

Billionaire Bill Ackman posted a 4,000-word essay arguing that his alma mater’s policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, are “the root cause of antisemitism” at Harvard University — even as he called for an overhaul of its governing board.

Hours after celebrating Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation, Ackman shared to X at 2:03 a.m. Wednesday that it wasn’t just the nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism against the embattled administrator that concerned him, but concerns that “DEI is racist.”

“The E for ‘equity’ in DEI is about equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity,” wrote Ackman, the 57-year-old founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.

“DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out),” Ackman added in the lengthy post.

He continued: “Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people and/or women are deemed to be oppressed.”

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“Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist,” he added.

“As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology.”

Ackman also blamed the DEI movement as “an important contributor to our growing divisiveness,” noting that it has bred resentment, “one of the most important drivers of racism.”

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Ackman added that he thinks the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, which Gay created, should also be shut down and that universities should seek out “capable business people for the role of president.”

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