Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, after helping to force President Claudine Gay to resign from her alma mater, is backing Harvard University by supporting four alumni seeking to join Harvard's Board of Supervisors. He promoted university reform.
Mr. Ackman, who has been engaged in a bitter public feud with Business Insider over Business Insider's reporting on his wife's plagiarism allegations, has announced that four Supported write-in candidates and pursued seats on corporate boards. It changes.
“Harvard needs to change. Bringing fresh young blood to the Board of Supervisors could help with that,” Ackman, who has donated about $50 million to Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters late Tuesday. He spoke at
Renew Harvard members are Zoe Bedell, Logan Leslie, Julia Pollack, and Alec Williams, who earned bachelor's, law, and business degrees from Harvard University.
The development poses new challenges for the board, whose 30 members are typically appointed by the university's alumni association.
It is the school's second-highest governing body, after embattled Harvard University, and has the power to approve or veto the hiring of Harvard's next president.
Five seats on the Board of Directors are up for election each year.
Professor Ackman said Harvard University has taken sufficient steps to protect students from anti-Semitic incidents in the wake of last October's deadly attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military operation in Gaza. They criticize the university's lack of diversity and inclusion programs. Suppress meritocracy.
The director candidates Ackman is supporting are “talented, accomplished, and motivated people, and their candidacy will be a wake-up call for Harvard,” he said.
The four men are between 36 and 38 years old, and all have served in the U.S. military.
A Harvard University spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a brief seen by Reuters, the four candidates called on the university to protect free speech, protect students from bullying and harassment, and address financial mismanagement, including the school's $50.7 billion endowment. He said he wanted this to be addressed.
The fund's investments will return 2.9% in 2023, well below the overall market's nearly 20% gain.
Mr. Ackman accused the Cambridge, Mass., educational institution of mismanaging and wasting some of his donations.
His hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, manages $18 billion in assets and returned about 27% last year.
Renew Harvard members are not endorsed by the Harvard Alumni Association, so to run for the Alumni Association election, members must collect at least 3,300 signatures from Ivy League alumni, representing 1% of those eligible to vote, at the end of January. must be collected by. Spring board.
Harvard alumni turnout in these polls is low, with less than 8.1% participating last year, according to the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.
The last successful board challenges were in 2020 and 2021, when Harvard Forward, an alumni coalition that urged the university's endowment to divest from fossil fuels, placed four candidates on the board. Selected.
In 1989, dissident alumni petitioned Harvard University to divest its investment holdings in companies operating in South Africa during racial apartheid and to elect Archbishop Desmond Tutu to its board of directors. supported.
“An outsider with a mission”
Gay, the university's first black president, resigned on Jan. 2 after just six months in office following backlash over plagiarism allegations and testimony to Congress about anti-Semitism on campus.
Alan Garber, Harvard University's president and chief academic officer, has been named interim president.
Ackman claimed that Business Insiders' exposure of his wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, was in retaliation for the anti-gay movement.
Williams said he met Ackman six years ago when he briefly worked for an investor family foundation before returning to his home state of Idaho.
Mr. Williams also knew Mr. Leslie, an Atlanta entrepreneur, from business school and Mr. Bedell, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, from college. They said in interviews that they discussed starting a campaign to join the oversight board in late December because of concerns about the direction of the university. Mr. Williams began drafting his opinion on Christmas Eve.
“We are outsiders, but we are also outsiders with a mission to renew the heart of the university,” Williams, a real estate entrepreneur and former naval officer, told Reuters.
Pollack, chief economist at online job market ZipRecruiter, was already running as a write-in candidate before joining the group.
All four said they were motivated by their love for Harvard, which educated eight U.S. presidents from John Adams to Barack Obama.
“This agency is not doomed, but we need an outside voice on the board to demand better leadership within the administration,” Leslie said.
The four candidates said the endowment's most recent revenues do not cover Harvard's operating costs, with undergraduate tuition at about $80,000 a year, out of reach for most students. He said that it has become something that does not exist.
They want endowments to work on a “market basis” and for schools to reduce administrative costs.
6 year term
The Oversight Board is not as powerful as Harvard University, which is a small governing body that directly oversees the university's operations, but it still wields influence.
The superintendent's main tool is the so-called visiting process, which allows him to ask questions and make assessments of Harvard's faculties and departments.
The term of office of the supervisor is six years.
In 2020, following the victory of Harvard Forward candidates, regulators and the Corporation jointly agreed to change rules that would make it harder for candidates to be selected without alumni support.
The regulator and the corporation argued that keeping candidates widely available would allow special interests to hijack the process, similar to political campaigns.
Currently, only the six directors voted on through petitions can serve on the board at any one time.
Others are launching write-in campaigns this year, including technology entrepreneur Sam Lessin and lawyer Harvey Silvergrate.
