Plagiarism Can Kill A Career If You Are Black, But Not if You Are These White People

Jessica Washington

Fri, January 5, 2024

Cambridge, MA - December 15: Claudine Gay speaks to the crowd after being named Harvard Universitys next president. Harvard University on Thursday named Gay as its next president in a historic move that will give the nations oldest college its first Black leader.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday — to the disappointment of many who lauded her appointment as the first Black president as a major achievement. For weeks, accusations of plagiarism plagued Gay. But many Black scholars argued that her real crime was being a Black woman in a position of power.

It’s worth asking how high-profile cases of plagiarism and other similar (and in some cases more egregious) forms of misconduct have been handled when the person accused was Black woman and when they were white.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay is obviously the most high profile case involving accusations of plagiarism right now. The accusations, which emerged publicly in December, primarily came from right-wing journalists, including Christopher Russo. Harvard University investigated, finding multiple incidents of “duplicative language,” and poor citations but nothing that rose to plagiarism or misconduct.

Claudine Gay Aftermath

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. Lawmakers on the education committee will grill the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about their responses to protests that erupted after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.More

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. Lawmakers on the education committee will grill the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about their responses to protests that erupted after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.

As we all obviously know now, Gay resigned from her position on Tuesday while engulfed in a media firestorm. Countless articles have been written about the allegations and while Gay has held on to her teaching position at Harvard University, she lost her position as President only six months into her tenure.

Alan Dershowitz

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 29: Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, speaks to the press in the Senate Reception Room during the Senate impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol on January 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. Wednesday begins the question-and-answer phase of the impeachment trial that will last up to 16 hours over the next two days.

In 2003, then-Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz was accused of plagiarizing multiple parts of his book The Case for Israel. Dershowitz vehemently denied the allegations arguing that this was a witch hunt against him because he was pro-Israel.

Alan Dershowitz Aftermath

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 27: Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, leaves the Senate chamber at the end of the day’s Senate impeachment trial proceedings at the U.S. Capitol January 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. The defense team continued its arguments on day six of the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump. (More


WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 27: Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, leaves the Senate chamber at the end of the day’s Senate impeachment trial proceedings at the U.S. Capitol January 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. The defense team continued its arguments on day six of the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump. (

Alan Dershowitz was cleared by the university remained in his position at Harvard University. He later retired from teaching there in 2013. Dershowitz was a major ring-leader in the movement to get Claudine Gay fired, writing in an op-ed that we have to “the D.E.I. bureaucracy must be dismantled, discredited and utterly destroyed.”

Former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne

NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 02: Marc Tessier-Lavigne attends the World Science Festival - On The Shoulders Of Giants: A Speical Address by E.O. Wilson Brunch at a private residence on June 2, 2012 in New York City.

Last year, an investigation by Stanford University found that there was “manipulation of research data” in several papers authored by then-Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne. However, they concluded that he did not personally engage in research misconduct.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne Aftermath

19 June 2018, USA, California: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (4-R) and his wife Elke Buedenbender (6-R) walking on the grounds of Stanford University with the President of the University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne (2-L), Bernd Girod (4-L), Professor of Electrical Engineering, and the delegation and looking at a cast of the Rodin sculpture “The Burghers of Calais”.More


19 June 2018, USA, California: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (4-R) and his wife Elke Buedenbender (6-R) walking on the grounds of Stanford University with the President of the University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne (2-L), Bernd Girod (4-L), Professor of Electrical Engineering, and the delegation and looking at a cast of the Rodin sculpture “The Burghers of Calais”.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s accusations were given significantly less media scrutiny than Gay’s case. The accusations that data had been manipulated in his research were lodged publicly in earnest against the former university president in November of 2022. He resigned in July of 2023.

Neil Gorsuch

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: Judge Neil Gorsuch testifies during the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, March 22, 2017 in Washington. Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy left on the court by the February 2016 death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Supreme Court had it’s own plagiarism scandal. Prior to his confirmation, Politico reported that he had “copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article.” Multiple scholars interviewed by the outlet agreed that it was plagiarism.

Neil Gorsuch Aftermath

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 07: United States Supreme Court (front row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pose for their official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Obviously, there were no consequences because he ended up sitting on the Supreme Court with a lifetime appointment.

Neri Oxman Wife of Bill Ackman

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 15: David Tuveson, Neri Oxman and Bill Ackman attend 2023 CSHL Double Helix Medals Dinner at American Museum of Natural History on November 15, 2023 in New York.

Billionaire and Harvard donor Bill Ackman was a major force behind the push to oust Claudine Gay over plagiarism. But his wife, Neri Oxman, a former tenured professor at MIT had her own plagiarism scandal. Business Insider reported that Oxman plagiarized multiple parts of her dissertation.

Neri Oxman Aftermath

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 19: Founder and CEO of OXMAN, Neri Oxman attends The Future of Everything presented by the Wall Street Journal at Spring Studios on May 19, 2022 in New York City.

Oxman apologized on Thursday for not properly citing her sources. She said that she was no longer at MIT as of 2020 and had started a company.

Patricia Smith



A security guard stands in front of the Boston Globe.

Boston Globe Columnist Patricia Smith, who is Black, admitted to fabricating people and quotes in several of her columns in the 1990s.

Patricia Smith Aftermath

Smith was ousted from her job after admitting to the fabrications. Before the scandal, Smith was a celebrated and talented poet in the poetry slam scene and a beloved columnist, who nearly won a Pulitzer prize. Smith’s career as a journalist ended with her firing. Although she continued to be successful in her poetry career — winning the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, she has kept out of the spotlight ever since leaving the journalism.

Mike Barnicle

Mike Barnicle with Matt Storin, editor, in background at The Boston Globe press conference.

Mike Barnicle was a peer of Smith’s at the Boston Globe also working as a columnist. The Boston Globe reportedly concluded that he had repeatedly stolen lines from comedian George Carlin and not come clean about it to the paper. The alleged plagiarism was discovered within weeks of the Smith ousting. He was also later suspected of potentially fabricating the existence two boys with cancer for a column.

Mike Barnicle Aftermath

MORNING JOE — Decision 2010 — Pictured: (l-r) New York Magazine’s Mike Heilemann, MSNBC Contributor Mike Barnicle


MORNING JOE — Decision 2010 — Pictured: (l-r) New York Magazine’s Mike Heilemann, MSNBC Contributor Mike Barnicle

Barnicle was initially suspended from the paper for a month, according to a contemporary Washington Post article. He was later asked to resign, but ultimately was allowed to remain on at the paper. Weeks later, he was eventually forced to quit after his editors were unable to determine whether two boys with cancer in his columns were real. Even at the time, the handling of his case drew comparisons to Smith’s. Unlike Smith, he maintained a career in journalism. He was hired as a columnist at the Boston Globe and became a regular contributor to MSNBC and the Today Show.

Janet Cooke

Original Caption) Janet Cooke, the former Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for a contrived story on an eight-year-old heroin addict, blamed the episode on “stupidity” rather than ambition during a taped interview with Phil Donahue. The taping will be broadcast on 02/05. She said she worked on the bogus story for months, that it was not one of her prouder moments. She is still unemployed.More

Janet Cooke, a Black Washington Post reporter, admitted to fabricating a story about an 8 year-old boy who was addicted to heroin. She had won a Pulitzer Prize for the story.

Janet Cooke Aftermath

Photo: Jasper James (Getty Images)

Janet Cooke was forced to resign from her position at the Washington Post. Cooke never worked as a journalist or writer again. The one-time Pulitzer Prize winner was later interviewed about her life, and said she was working at a department store for around minimum wage because she couldn’t get other work. “I don’t think that in this particular case the punishment has fit the crime. I’ve lost my voice. I’ve lost half of my life. I’m in a situation where cereal has become a viable dinner choice,” she told the Washington Post in 1996. Her current whereabouts and career are unknown.

Honorable Mention: President Joe Biden

Democratic politician Joseph R. Biden Jr, the United States Senator from Delaware, circa 1980. He became the US Vice President in 2009 under President Barack Obama.


Democratic politician Joseph R. Biden Jr, the United States Senator from Delaware, circa 1980. He became the US Vice President in 2009 under President Barack Obama.

Speaking of allegations of plagiarism, the President of the United States had his own run-in with plagiarism allegations. During the 1980s, the New York Times reported that the then-Senator had plagiarized several parts of his speeches from British politicians.

President Joe Biden Aftermath

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 06: U.S. President Joe Biden gestures to members of the press prior to his departure from the White House May 6, 2022 in Washington, DC. President Biden is traveling to Hamilton, Ohio, to visit United Performance Metals.

President Joe Biden did face consequences for the New York Times report. He left the 1988 Presidential race. However, that (obviously) didn’t tank his political career. He’s now the President of the United States.

HOISTED BY HIS OWN PETARD

Bill Ackman says he'll review all MIT professors for plagiarism

His move comes after BI reported on several instances of plagiarism in his wife's academic work.

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert
Jan 5, 2024

Brian Snyder/Reuters


Bill Ackman is ramping up his search for plagiarism and pledged to review all MIT professors' work.

His move comes after BI reported on several instances of plagiarism in his wife's academic work.

Ackman led the charge to get Harvard president Claudine Gay to resign over plagiarism accusations.

Bill Ackman is ramping up his crusade against plagiarism to include the work of all Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors after Business Insider reported on several instances of plagiarism found in academic work by his wife, Neri Oxman, a tenured MIT professor.

MIT has not yet commented on the accusations against Oxman. However, a representative for the university told Business Insider "our leaders remain focused on ensuring the vital work of the people of MIT continues, work that is essential to the nation's security, prosperity and quality of life."

Ackman recently spearheaded the campaign to get Harvard's former president, Claudine Gay, to resign from her position over allegations that she had plagiarized in her own academic papers. The push to get her to leave her post came after Ackman and others condemned Gay's response to the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel.

Gay resigned Tuesday following weeks of criticism.

"It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family," Ackman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday. "This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews. We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism."

My wife, @NeriOxman, was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source.

Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story…— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 5, 2024

A representative for Ackman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

In December, Ackman began calling for Gay's resignation, as well as that of University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and MIT's Sally Kornbluth following their testimony before Congress about handling antisemitism on campus.

Critics derided the testimony from the elite schools' leaders as being insufficient to address antisemitism on campus, which students say has increased in the wake of Israel's declaration of war on Hamas.

Magill resigned on December 9, just four days after her testimony in which she stated that if antisemitic speech "turns into conduct, it can be harassment." Donors to Penn and the board of Wharton, the university's business school, had called for her resignation. No known accusations of plagiarism were involved in her decision to step down.

Kornbluth remains in her role as of Friday, announcing the day after Gay's resignation a plan for four "new steps" for progress at MIT, including improving student disciplinary processes and making sure its DEI programs effectively meet campus needs.

Kornbluth did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Bill Ackman’s wife is accused of plagiarizing part of her dissertation

Allison Morrow, CNN
Fri, January 5, 2024 

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Neri Oxman, an academic and wife of billionaire investor Bill Ackman, plagiarized parts of her doctoral dissertation at MIT, according to a report from Business Insider.

Ackman has become one of the most prominent critics amplifying a series of accusations, including plagiarism, against Harvard’s leader, who resigned this week.

The Business Insider report, which CNN could not independently verify, said Oxman “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation.” The report “found at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.”

Oxman, an American–Israeli designer, wrote a more than 800-word response to Business Insider on social media Thursday. Oxman acknowledged that there were four paragraphs in her 330-page dissertation in which she correctly cited her sources but “did not place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors.”

Omitting quotation marks is a violation of MIT’s academic integrity handbook, “both as it is currently written and as it was at the time,” Business Insider wrote.

Oxman said that Business Insider was unwilling to give her sufficient time to check a source in one of the disputed paragraphs because the source was not online.

“When I obtain access to the original sources, I will check all of the above citations and request that MIT make any necessary corrections,” she said in the statement.

The plagiarism accusations lobbed at former Harvard president Claudine Gay were similarly technical — many related to “inadequate citations,” according to Harvard. Gay says she promptly requested corrections in her writings upon learning of the errors and denies she ever claimed credit for others’ research.

One of the scholars Gay quoted improperly, David Canon, has spoken out in her defense.

“I am not at all concerned about the passages … This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism,” Canon told CNN.

But Ackman took a firm line on the right-wing-led plagiarism accusations against Gay, calling them “serious” grounds to fire her.

In response to the Business Insider report, Ackman defended Oxman on X.

“Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate,” he wrote.

A representative told CNN that Ackman and Oxman have no further comment beyond their posts on X.

Oxman is a prestigious figure in architecture and design circles, and she is credited with pioneering an interdisciplinary approach called “material ecology.”

She became a tenured member of MIT’s faculty in 2017, though she left the school in 2020 after she married Ackman and moved to New York City, according to her X post on Thursday.

— CNN’s Matt Egan contributed reporting.

Neri Oxman admits to plagiarizing in her doctoral dissertation after BI report

Katherine Long
Thu, January 4, 2024 

BUSINESS INSIDER

Neri Oxman at an event in 2017.Riccardo Savi / Getty Images

Neri Oxman, a former tenured professor at MIT, apologized for parts of her dissertation.

Business Insider found that Oxman, the wife of Bill Ackman, had multiple instances of plagiarism.

"I regret and apologize for these errors," she wrote on X, and said she would update her work.

Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, admitted to failing to properly credit sources in portions of her doctoral dissertation after Business Insider published an article finding that Oxman engaged in a pattern of plagiarism similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay.

BI identified four instances in Oxman's dissertation in which she lifted paragraphs from other scholars' work without including them in quotation marks. In those instances, Oxman wrote in a post on X, using quotation marks would have been "the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors."

Ackman has been on a crusade to force Gay to resign, which she did this week. Revelations that she had plagiarized portions of academic articles, publicized by far-right activist Christopher Rufo, added fuel to his calls for Gay to step down after protests against Israel's war in Gaza rocked Harvard's campus.

Ackman said Gay had mishandled the student protests and created a culture of antisemitism at the elite Cambridge institution. Gay's plagiarism underscored her lack of fitness to lead the institution, or even to teach at Harvard, Ackman wrote on X, calling Gay's plagiarism "very serious."

Oxman, an architect and artist, received her Ph.D. from MIT in 2010 and became a tenured professor there in 2017 before leaving the university in June 2021, an MIT spokesperson said. Her failure to use quotation marks to identify passages of text from other sources meets the definition of plagiarism as spelled out in MIT's academic integrity handbook.

Oxman wrote on X that after she has reviewed the original sources, she plans to "request that MIT make any necessary corrections."

"As I have dedicated my career to advancing science and innovation, I have always recognized the profound importance of the contributions of my peers and those who came before me. I hope that my work is helpful to the generations to come," she wrote.

Oxman now leads an eponymous company, Oxman, focused on "innovation in product, architectural, and urban design," she wrote on X. "OXMAN has been in stealth mode. I look forward to sharing more about OXMAN later this year."

Her husband, Ackman, lauded her transparency in his own post on X following the publication of Business Insider's article.

"Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate," he wrote.

Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism

Katherine Long,  Jack Newsham
Thu, January 4, 2024 
BUSINESS INSIDER

Patrick McMullan/Steven Ferdman/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, resigned after conservative activists revealed she had plagiarized.


The hedge fund manager and prominent Harvard donor Bill Ackman helped lead the charge against Gay.


BI analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism.

The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza on Harvard's campus.

An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.

Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.

Her husband, Ackman, has taken a hardline stance on plagiarism. On Wednesday, responding to news that Gay is set to remain a part of Harvard's faculty after she resigned as president, he wrote on X that Gay should be fired completely due to "serious plagiarism issues."

"Students are forced to withdraw for much less," Ackman continued. "Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard."

An architect and artist who experiments with new ways to synthesize materials found in nature, Oxman has been the subject of profiles in major outlets such as The New York Times and Elle. She has collaborated with Björk, exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.

In 2019, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe showed Ackman pressured MIT to keep Oxman's name out of a brewing scandal over an original sculpture she gave to Jeffrey Epstein in thanks for a $125,000 donation to her lab.

While MIT and Pershing Square Foundation continue to describe her as a professor in online biographies, a spokesperson for Pershing Square Capital Management said she left MIT in 2020 "after she got married, became a mother, and moved to New York City." After this article was published, MIT responded to a prior request for comment, writing that Oxman left MIT in June 2021.

Her husband, meanwhile, has been vocal about wanting to see MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, fired since Kornbluth testified on December 5 in front of a congressional panel examining how university presidents handled student protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Kornbluth said in her opening statement that she didn't support "speech codes" that would restrict what students say during protests.

Ackman attacked Kornbluth's testimony, as well as that of Gay and the University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, as tantamount to supporting antisemitism. He also criticized the presidents' stated goals of improving campus diversity, equity, and inclusion as "violations of basic American principles."

"To the @MIT governing boards: Let's make a deal. If you promptly terminate President Kornbluth, I promise I won't write you a letter," Ackman posted on X on December 10, referring to an open letter he sent to Harvard's governing board criticizing Gay's leadership.

Both Oxman and Ackman declined to comment when reached by Business Insider. Both posted lengthy responses on X to the piece shortly after it was published.
Multiple instances of plagiarism from a 2010 dissertation

In Oxman's dissertation, completed at MIT, she plagiarized a 1998 paper by two Israeli scholars, Steve Weiner and H. Daniel Wagner, a 2006 article published in the journal Nature by the New York University historian Peder Anker, and a 1995 paper published in the proceedings of the Royal Society of London. She also lifted from a book published in 1998 by the German physicist Claus Mattheck and, in a more classical mode of plagiarism, copied one paragraph from Mattheck without any quotation or attribution.

Business Insider

"The basic building block of the bone family of materials is the mineralized collagen fibril," Weiner and Wagner wrote in their paper. "It is composed of the fibrous protein collagen in a structural form that is also present in skin, tendon, and a variety of other soft tissues. The collagen constitutes the main component of a three-dimensional matrix into which, and in some cases onto which, the mineral forms."

Business Insider

That passage was included in its entirety in Oxman's dissertation. She cited Weiner and Wagner but did not include the passage in quotation marks, a violation of MIT's academic-integrity handbook, both as it is currently written and as it was at the time.

Business Insider

Similarly, in most of the other instances that BI identified in which Oxman lifted passages from other works, she cited the author but did not put quotation marks around the plagiarized material.

Business Insider

MIT's academic-integrity handbook notes that authors must either "use quotation marks around the words and cite the source," or "paraphrase or summarize acceptably and cite the source." Oxman published her thesis in 2010; identical language appeared in MIT's handbook at least as far back as 2007.

From MIT's academic-integrity handbook.MIT

Oxman also took a passage from Mattheck's book without attribution and inaccurately attributed a passage she lifted from the Royal Society of London paper to two different sources.

Business Insider

She also recycled phrasing she used in her dissertation in subsequent papers. The opening paragraph of her dissertation, for instance, appears almost word-for-word in an article she published in 2013. While re-using material isn't a formal violation of MIT's academic-integrity code, a guide to "ethical writing" recommended by the university to its scholars and students warns against it.

Ackman said Harvard president's plagiarism made her unfit to work

Like Oxman, Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics' work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.

Gay's plagiarism was seen by some academics, including many of those she plagiarized, as relatively inconsequential.

George Reid Andrews, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the people Gay plagiarized, told the New York Post that what Gay did "happens fairly often in academic writing and for me does not rise to the level of plagiarism."

"I am glad she read my work, learned from it, and recommended it to her readers," Andrews continued.

But for Bill Ackman, the plagiarism wasn't only cause for Gay's immediate ouster as Harvard's president — it also warranted her total removal from its faculty. In the weeks leading up to her resignation as president, he posted more than a dozen times about her plagiarism on X.

Ackman, a Harvard graduate worth roughly $4 billion, has been a prolific donor to the school. His most substantial donation, of $25 million in 2014, supported the expansion of the economics department and the endowment of three professorships. He also made a smaller contribution to the rowing crew, a team he was part of as an undergraduate.

Ackman and Oxman married in 2019 and their first child was born the same year. In 2015, Ackman purchased a luxury apartment in New York's swanky One57 building, which Oxman also lists as an address, according to public records. The couple are listed as trustees for the Pershing Square Foundation, a charitable organization.

Ackman began campaigning for Gay's removal in the wake of widespread protests on Harvard's campus related to Israel's invasion of Gaza in October. Ackman decried the protests as antisemitic and accused Gay of not doing enough to protect either Jewish students or "academic freedom."

"President Gay catalyzed an explosion of antisemitism and hate on campus that is unprecedented in Harvard's history," he wrote last month on X.

Ackman also intimated that he had inside information that Gay had only been offered the job as Harvard's president because she is a Black woman. Gay became the school's first Black president and the second woman president in July.

On X, he wrote that he had been informed that Harvard would not choose a president "who did not meet the DEI office's criteria." Gay, he implied, would most likely "not have obtained" the role of president "were it not for a fat finger on the scale."

Gay's plagiarism was surfaced by the right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, who was forthright about his plans to "smuggle" the news of the plagiarism "into the media apparatus" to lend credence to those calling for Gay's resignation.

Harvard's governing body, the Harvard Corporation, initially stood by Gay's handling of the on-campus protests and her plagiarism. In recent weeks, though, pressure on Gay to resign has mounted, spearheaded in no small part by Ackman.

Gay resigned as Harvard's president on Tuesday. In a letter to the Harvard community, Gay wrote that she was stepping down in part due to "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

But Ackman remains on the hunt for one more head. Of the three university presidents who testified in front of Congress in a disastrous early December session, two of them — Gay and Magill — are no longer in their posts. One remains: Kornbluth, the president of MIT, where Oxman wrote her thesis and worked from 2010 to 2020.

When a user on X asked Ackman why he wasn't going after Kornbluth, Ackman's response was to the point.

"Stay tuned @MIT," Ackman replied.

Israeli wife of billionaire who pushed to oust Harvard president accused of plagiarism

Neri Oxman, partner of Bill Ackman, acknowledges and apologizes for several attribution errors in her dissertation; faces fresh claims she also copied from Wikipedia

By TOI STAFF and AGENCIES6 January 2024, 

Neri Oxman, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, speaks at The 2017 Concordia Annual Summit at Grand Hyatt New York on September 18, 2017 in New York City. (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP)

Israeli-born designer and academic Prof. Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, has apologized for several errors in her 2010 dissertation, after Business Insider alleged it contained a number of instances of plagiarism.

Earlier this week, Business Insider reported Oxman had “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation.”

Ackman was a leading figure in the campaign to oust Harvard president Claudine Gay, citing both her failure to tackle antisemitism on campus and the accusations of plagiarism against her. He said the allegations against his wife were part of “attacks on his family” due to his “actions to address problems in higher education.”

Oxman wrote on X Thursday that in four cases in the 330-page work, though she did cite the sources for her text in the paragraph, she “did not place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting the work.”

She also acknowledged that in one other case, she paraphrased the work of another writer without proper attribution, while noting she had acknowledged him and clearly quoted him in multiple instances throughout the work.

“I regret and apologize for these errors,” she wrote.

Bill Ackman attends the Hamptons International Film Festival on August 6, 2016 in East Hampton, New York (Matthew Eisman/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP)

After she made her statement, Business Insider on Saturday published further allegations, saying the dissertation contained at least 15 passages it claimed had been lifted straight from Wikipedia, without quotations or attribution. Oxman had not yet responded as of Saturday evening.

Gay resigned earlier this week amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a US congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.

Following the hearing, Gay’s academic career came under intense scrutiny by activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.

Oxman was previously caught up in controversy in 2019, when it was revealed that convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein gifted some $125,000 to Oxman’s Mediated Matter research group at MIT’s prestigious Media Lab.

Oxman said then she had been told at the time that Epstein was an approved donor, and said she regretted accepting the funds.

BILLIONAIRE McCARTHYISM

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman takes aim at DEI ‘ideology’ after Harvard president’s resignation, claiming it’s anti-capitalist

Irina Ivanova
Wed, January 3, 2024 

Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg


Bill Ackman scored a victory in his campaign against Harvard when the university’s president, Claudia Gay, stepped down on Monday following allegations she failed to properly respond to antisemitism on campus. Not one to rest, Ackman is now broadening his scope to take aim at Harvard’s overall approach, accusing the institution of falling prey to what he calls “a political advocacy movement” and “ideology” known as DEI that is anti-meritocratic to the core.

According to the billionaire hedge fund manager, the anti-semitism that he had previously accused Harvard of “was not the core of the problem” but merely “a troubling warning sign” of the real issue—an obsession with DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, that has grown into something entirely different from the three concepts embedded within the acronym, he said on X on Tuesday.

In the 4,000-word post, Ackman painted DEI as a “movement” that is antithetical to any merit-based program, including capitalism itself. Ackman’s missive appears to be the first mainstream criticism of DEI as “anti-capitalist,” and it widens the scope of a yearslong debate over DEI initiatives that has roiled the business community. Now, instead of DEI being part of a new way of looking at “stakeholder capitalism,” Ackman is accusing it of being an “ideology” harmful to the functioning of a capitalist economy.

“Under DEI’s ideology,” he wrote, “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.” By this standard, he continued, “Capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist …” Zooming out in his analysis, he said the use of the lens of “oppression” means that 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 then accused diversity proponents of censoring dissenting views, akin to the Red Scare of the 1920s and 1950s, which culminated in Congressional hearings to root out suspected communist sympathizers in American industry. Except in Ackman’s telling, DEI proponents are in charge of the institutions and hold the power, while those who disagree with DEI principles “may find [themselves] unemployed, shunned by colleagues, cancelled, and/or [they] will otherwise put [their] career and acceptance in society at risk.”

“The techniques that DEI has used to squelch the opposition are found in the Red Scares and McCarthyism of decades past,” Ackman wrote. A few lines later he called DEI efforts a step “on the path to socialism” that is “inherently inconsistent with basic American values.”
If capitalism is racist, is DEI anti-capitalist?

Ackman’s screed is far from the first attack on DEI in recent years. Diversity initiatives have come under increasing fire from conservatives who claim that such efforts are racist toward white Americans, sometimes lumping them in with other liberal-sounding corporate programs, such as the emphasis on ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing. These programs are rebranded as “anti-white racism” or, in the case of ESG, as discrimination against fossil fuels.

That effort, which culminated in the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions last year, has been brewing for years. Former President Donald Trump famously banned diversity and sensitivity training in a 2020 executive order, calling it a “malign ideology” akin to stereotyping. States including Florida and Texas have passed laws curtailing discussions of diversity in higher education. Last summer, Republican attorneys general put all Fortune 100 companies on notice about their corporate diversity programs, which observers believe are the next target of the conservative high court.

Versions of corporate diversity efforts have existed since the 1970s, when the federal government formally outlawed workplace discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin. But DEI as branding has truly flourished over the past decade, gaining steam after the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the social outcry for racial equity that it fueled. The late-2010s shift to a more holistic, gentler capitalism held that corporations should consider all of their stakeholders—employees, communities, and customers—in their actions.

“Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country,” the influential Business Roundtable wrote in 2019, in a statement detailing its members’ commitment to pay fair wages, embrace diversity, do business sustainably, and deal ethically with suppliers. It was a prominent rejection of the shareholder-primacy dogma of the previous four decades which held that a corporation’s only responsibility was to deliver profits to shareholders, a view that critics said verged on psychopathic.

The latest legal and cultural assault from the right, however, puts those goals in jeopardy. And companies are responding to the backlash: Six major corporations, including American Airlines, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Lowe’s, watered down statements committing to diversity policies, Reuters reported last month.

Ironically, for as much criticism as DEI initiatives are seeing from the conservative camp, they have also been criticized by liberals and leftists for being ineffective in closing racial gaps, perpetuating stereotypes, or even allowing companies a form of reputation laundering. In an extreme example of the latter, The Intercept reported on CoreCivic, the private prison company, touting its support for “principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.” Often, employees themselves are skeptical of these efforts, data shows: 75% of respondents to a Catalyst survey last year in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S. said they believed their company’s racial equity policies were insincere.

Throughout all this, the fundamental problem DEI was ostensibly supposed to solve has remained stubbornly persistent. About one in six Americans is Black, but Black people make up only 4% of leadership at large companies, while the difference between what white and Black workers earn has, by some metrics, remained unchanged since the 1950s.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Bill Ackman has spent much of his career investing in undervalued companies, demanding change and pursuing very public pressure campaigns — often moving to oust the management or the board. - Matthew Eisman/Getty Images

Bill Ackman’s calls for the removal of Harvard University President Claudine Gay were ripped straight out of a corporate raider’s playbook.

It was a natural approach for the billionaire hedge-fund manager who made his name as an aggressive activist investor. For decades, he amassed his fortune by investing in undervalued companies, demanding change and pursuing very public pressure campaigns — often moving to oust a company’s management or board of directors.

But in the case of Harvard, Ackman used posts on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, rather than filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, to make his case.

Ackman’s bare-knuckles boardroom tactics in the Gay matter have attracted criticism. The NAACP accused him of racism for going after the first Black president of Americas’ oldest university. Others have charged that he rode an ideologically driven push from the political right against diversity, equity and inclusion measures in academia to get what he wanted.

On Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton led a protest outside the offices of Ackman’s fund, Pershing Square Capital Management.

Ackman has denied being driven by racism in his campaign against Gay, countering that efforts to bring more people of color into positions of power, part of the framework known as DEI, are themselves racist because, in his view, they discriminate against white people. Proponents of DEI initiatives say they boost underrepresented groups’ presence in the workplace, create a fairer playing field and foster greater belonging, in addition to being a smart business move.

“DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people,” Ackman wrote in a lengthy X post following Gay’s resignation earlier this week. “Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism.”

A spokesman for Ackman said his comments on X speak for themselves.
The Elvis of investing

Ackman made his name through an aggressive approach to investments, building his firm into one of the highest-profile hedge funds in the country, with $18 billion in assets under management. His personal fortune is estimated to be around $4 billion, according to Forbes.

His model has been to focus on a small handful of stock investments, take counterintuitive bets and then make a lot of noise, often putting himself at the center of attention. Among the investor class, he has developed a kind of cult of personality. His research on corporate situations can often be sharp and exhaustive, but sometimes his activist campaigns to shake up corporate boardrooms turn into circuses. He has been called the Elvis of investing .

In some years, Ackman’s fund has outperformed, by huge numbers, many of its rivals and the stock market broadly — for example, making more than $2 billion in profit by shorting the market ahead of the pandemic. His investment in the real-estate investment trust General Growth Properties, in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, turned into a $3.7 billion profit for his fund. His Pershing Square Holdings returned 26.7% net of fees in 2023, edging out the U.S. stock market, as gauged by the S&P 500 SPX.

Hedge-fund managers like Ackman make money by collecting performance fees, usually 20% of the annual profits generated by investments made in the market. They often also have a significant amount of their own net worth invested in their funds.

Ackman’s brash approach has rubbed many people the wrong way. A decade ago, he lost a fight over a high-profile $1 billion short position he took against the nutrition company Herbalife HLF, which he accused of operating as a pyramid scheme, bringing him head-to-head with famed corporate raider Carl Icahn. Ackman lost big money on Herbalife and disastrous activist positions in J.C. Penney and Valeant Pharmaceuticals .

His hedge fund may have averted disaster by raising $2.7 billion of permanent investing capital in an initial public offering of Pershing Square Holdings NL:PSH PSHZF that Ackman conducted on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange. When investors in Ackman’s hedge fund started pulling their money out amid the Herbalife, Valeant and J.C. Penney losses, Ackman knew the money he had raised in Amsterdam in 2014 was secure.

It wasn’t the first time Ackman had to deal with a serious threat to his business. He shut his first hedge fund, Gotham Partners, in 2002, after making some bad bets on golf courses. He launched Pershing Square Capital Management two years later.

Following the bruising Herbalife period, Ackman said he was taking a new, lower-key approach to investing, after which Pershing Square had some of its strongest years. His current portfolio includes shares in the likes of Google GOOG GOOGL, Chipotle Mexican Grill CMG and Lowe’s Cos. LOW. Ackman is not publicly demanding anything from the people running these companies.

But old habits die hard.

Harvard ouster

A graduate of both Harvard and its graduate business school, Ackman has long been a substantial donor to the school. He has said over the years that he has frequently offered advice on how the university should be run and how to handle its enormous endowment, but that he has often been ignored.

On X, Ackman said he initially supported Gay’s appointment to Harvard’s presidency in late 2022. But after pro-Palestinian protests on Harvard’s campus following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead, Ackman said, he felt Gay didn’t do enough to make Jewish students feel safe.

After a highly criticized appearance before Congress, in which Gay answered questions about whether calling for genocide against Jews was a violation of Harvard’s policies by saying it depended on the context, Ackman more vocally called for her ouster. (Gay said in a New York Times op-ed Wednesday that she had fallen into “a well-laid trap” at the congressional hearing.)

Gay ultimately stepped down on Tuesday, following investigations by conservative groups and media outlets into her academic work that turned up alleged instances of plagiarism .

Now, in keeping with the corporate-raider playbook, Ackman says Harvard’s board of trustees should also step down, and its DEI office should be disbanded.

He is also turning his attention to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sally Kornbluth, the only university president who testified in the congressional antisemitism hearing who has retained her job.

Meanwhile, Business Insider has published a report accusing Ackman’s wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, of plagiarism. Oxman acknowledged on X that, in her 330-page Ph.D. dissertation, she did not properly place language in four paragraphs in quotation marks and did not properly provide a citation in another sentence, saying she regretted the errors