We’re all shocked this happened, right?
YEAH, RIGHT
Actually, though, I think it’s going to be Business Insider that’s shocked, but lets start at the beginning.
So most of you know who Bill Ackman is, but for those of you who don’t, he’s the billionaire Harvard alumni who’s been the most vocal and, frankly, most outspokenly aggrieved about what transpired throughout the entire revolting Claudine Gay debacle.
The last word that Ackman had on the subject was an incredibly thoughtful 4000 word essay he posted on X. It concerned what he found at Harvard after he “went up to campus to see things with my own eyes.”
…When I saw President Gay’s initial statement about the massacre, it provided more context (!) for the student groups’ statement of support for terrorism. The protests began as pro-Palestine and then became anti-Israel. Shortly, thereafter, antisemitism exploded on campus as protesters who violated Harvard’s own codes of conduct were emboldened by the lack of enforcement of Harvard’s rules, and kept testing the limits on how aggressive, intimidating, and disruptive they could be to Jewish and Israeli students, and the student body at large. Sadly, antisemitism remains a simmering source of hate even at our best universities among a subset of students.
A few weeks later, I went up to campus to see things with my own eyes, and listen and learn from students and faculty. I met with 15 or so members of the faculty and a few hundred students in small and large settings, and a clearer picture began to emerge.
I ultimately concluded that antisemitism was not the core of the problem, it was simply a troubling warning sign – it was the “canary in the coal mine” – despite how destructive it was in impacting student life and learning on campus.
I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment….
Things came to a head shortly thereafter, particularly as word of even more instances of Gay’s plagiarisms broke in the Free Beacon. Gay finally resigned, the liberal press and the virtue signaling, grievance mobs broke into wailing, moaning, and butchered history lessons trying to blame everything from white supremacy to racists and between for Gay’s personal and ethical failures.
Consummate race-baiter Rev Al was so incensed, he organized a protest – not at Harvard, where Gay had reigned for the shortest presidential tenure ever, and would be keeping her schweet $900K a year stipend regardless of the circumstances of her departure. No, Rev Al was going to storm the New York offices of one Bill Ackman, RACIST.
That was today.
Okay. Not exactly a storm. Rev Al managed to whip up a the sidewalk version of what might charitably be called “a drizzle.”
We’ve crammed more people into our living room for dinner parties than Al Sharpton was able to whip up against @BillAckman. pic.twitter.com/PGH5mZLcqs
— Gary Weiss (@gary_weiss) January 4, 2024
Also today, this big Business Insider scoop hit on Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman. It’s a lurid mess of accusations, gossip, and hyperbole against both Oxman and Ackman.
Well, fair’s fair if it’s true, right?
Billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard 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 MIT 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 will 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.”
…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 collaborated with Björk, exhibited at MOMA, and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.
In the first place, I’m sure BI wasn’t counting on Ms. Oxfam coming straight out re: the issues with her work they address in the piece…nor the part about BI only giving her “until 4 p.m.” to answer their pretty bold insinuations of intentional academic fraud.
Her tweet on X is a prime example of grace, unwinding a situation calmly, and how to immediately address an issue.
I was forwarded an email this morning from a reporter at Business Insider who noted that there are four paragraphs in my 330-page PhD dissertation: “Material-based Design Computation,” which I completed at @MIT in 2010,https://t.co/6LE1O4FiiL
where I omitted quotation marks…
— Neri Oxman (@NeriOxman) January 4, 2024
…Unfortunately, because some of the original sources are not online, and Business Insider was unwilling to give me beyond 4pm to review these citations, I cannot confirm whether Business Insider or the sources I referenced for this paragraph are correct.
When I obtain access to the original sources, I will check all of the above citations and request that MIT make any necessary corrections…
Well, golly – don’t they look shabby.
Gay had months and months of notice there were issues with her work, yet never addressed the problems head on. Interesting.
There are also a plethora of people pointing out that there are no parallels in this outrage journalism to the Claudine Gay situation. Also the fact that had Ms. Gay handled it immediately as Ms. Oxfam did, she’d no doubt still be sitting in the catbird seat instead of merely still drawing the paycheck.
Business Insider‘s “reporters” should be ashamed of themselves. Less than a day to respond? And all of the examples involved *including* citations in the correct paragraph? If this had been all that Claudine Gay had done, she would still have a job. I respect you (and your wife)…
— Benjamin B@dejo (@benjamin_bdj) January 4, 2024
Alex Berenson weighed in.
I don’t particularly like @BillAckman, but this is HORSESHIT. Put aside the fact the cases are not comparable. Ackman’s wife @NeriOxman is no longer a professor, so it doesn’t matter if her dissertation is a crayon copy of The Lorax, she isn’t violating any university’s standards pic.twitter.com/OTDb5F1qWN
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) January 4, 2024
As Ackman has his sights set on MIT at the moment, some folks are assuming it was a combined hit piece courtesy of both institutions.
From a senior member of the @MIT faculty: https://t.co/chWblasmCn
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 4, 2024
It takes courage to speak up for what’s right, and there are consequences to be considered, even for a billionaire. Elon Musk is one example of that. Ackman and his wife are now another.
I anticipate we’ll be hearing more about this in the next day or two, as the progressives make hay of it, and it gets exposed for the hit job it is. Ms. Oxfam took the wind completely out of BI’s sails with her concise and graceful explanation.
It was, for lack of a better term, textbook.
There are also effective ways to handle the attacks you know could be coming, and they are the very ways the Left is incapable of managing themselves. Openness, honesty, transparency, a mea culpa if one is required.
But never, ever on bended knee.
You have to know who you’re dealing with and the progressives have made it very clear who they are.