Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager, has been in the news these past couple of months for a few reasons. Months ago, he got involved in the campus free speech debate and subsequently became a vocal critic of ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay.
Claudine Gay resigned on January 2, 2024, and days later Business Insider reported that Ackman's wife Neri Oxman's Ph.D in design computation from MIT "stole sentences and whole paragraphs" from numerous sources, including Wikipedia and other scholars. After BI's reports surfaced, Oxman posted that she regretted the errors and apologized for them — but now, a week since the initial report, Ackman has taken it upon himself to rebut the plagiarism accusations.
btw this is the lady who started the "Weaving" Wikipedia article, which was one of the ones that Bill Ackman's wife plagiarized in her PhD thesis https://t.co/HwiisqP1Uz
— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwiki) January 11, 2024
Normally, this scene would have played out behind closed doors, but thanks to X now allowing thousands of characters, we can witness an expensive meltdown without interruption. Ackman claims that the aforementioned reports have damaged his wife's career, and also wants to dispute the bare facts of plagiarism. He's pointed out how Wikipedia wasn't codified in the university handbook and has attempted to refute the plagiarism accusations altogether.
If you were wondering how deep Bill Ackman's diligence process is: nearly a week into his war with Business Insider, he's just tweeted he "didn’t know until today" that CPPIB had a stake in Axel Springer.
— Robert Smith (@BondHack) January 11, 2024
Is this hard to find info? Um, well here's an FT graphic from 2022 👇 pic.twitter.com/oU0Hu7HJey
Ackman isn't on the big board, but he is estimated to be worth $4 billion, and has made it clear that he will dedicate time and resources to this fight. A week into this, Ackman has already gone straight to the top floor — reaching out to directors on Business Insider's board and its shareholder executives — and asked for them to meet him "in New York immediately" to "resolve this mess."
NEW @PuckNews: The battle between @BillAckman & Business Insider seems poised for further escalation. “Most people underestimated the way that Bill Ackman is completely losing it,” an Axel Springer spokesperson tells me, but “the facts of the story stand.” https://t.co/qNNzqFGyBb
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) January 11, 2024
The last time a billionaire went on a crusade against the system, he decided to spend $44 billion to rectify course. Granted, that price range may be a bit out of reach for Ackman's revenge project, but thanks to that precedent, we now, unfortunately, have first-row seats at another billionaire beef.
[Image: CNBC Television/YouTube]
