TOPLINE
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman lashed out—and vowed payback—after reports claimed his wife, designer Neri Oxman, improperly cited multiple authors and Wikipedia in her doctor thesis, all of which followed Ackman’s role in leading the charge against Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned amid plagiarism allegations.
Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, improperly cited multiple sources, including Wikipedia, a report found.
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KEY FACTS
A report in Business Insider published Thursday suggested Oxman, an architect and designer whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, improperly cited at least four paragraphs in her PhD dissertation she wrote at MIT in 2010.
A followup report Friday claimed Oxman lifted entire paragraphs from Wikipedia in the dissertation, without proper citations.
Oxman, who now runs an eponymous startup in New York, apologized for the four improper citations in a post on X, but also noted she did not have time to check every alleged instance of plagiarism before Business Insider’s 4 p.m. deadline.
Ackman responded with a 5,000 word post on X on Saturday night, accusing Business Insider of not giving his wife enough time to respond to the allegations.
Ackman also said Oxman’s use of Wikipedia quotations with citations “does not strike me as plagiarism” and compared it to consulting a dictionary or thesaurus.
In another post on Sunday, Ackman accused both Business Insider and Bloomberg of breaking a “sacred code” that “[y]
ou never go after someone’s family to get at a business person” and implied that this meant he could respond by “going after the owner of the media company and his wife and family.”
He has suggested the allegations came from within MIT, and on Friday threatened to survey all of the work of MIT’s faculty for signs of plagiarism, and then said he would review Business Insider’s “reporters and staff” for examples of plagiarism.
KEY BACKGROUND
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned on January 2, following a month of criticism over her testimony at a House committee on campus anti-semitism and allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis. Ackman was outspoken in his criticism of Gay, who called on her to resign after the December 5 testimony. After the controversial hearing, Gay was accused of improperly citing or quoting at least 50 other sources in her dissertation. Harvard’s board initially stood by Gay, stating that they found “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct” within her dissertation, but reportedly lost confidence as more examples of plagiarism surfaced. After Gay announced her resignation last Tuesday, Ackman called on the rest of the Harvard board to resign, in part because of their “inadequate due diligence about her academic record.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“If the plagiarism was truly unintentional (and there are ways to judge whether this is the case), then I wouldn’t question the character of the author,” Ackman said after stating the need to come up with “new standards” for plagiarism.
TANGENT
Ackman’s comments on Sunday come amid an ongoing fight with MIT. After Gay’s resignation last Tuesday, the billionaire signaled he would turn his attention to Sally Kornbluth, the university’s president and one of the other college leaders who testified before Congress on December 5 (the third president—University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill—resigned shortly after). Ackman called for all three presidents to “resign in disgrace” after the hearing, accusing them of “believ[ing] genocide depends on the context.” Ackman also called attention to Kornbluth’s previous role as Provost of Duke University. During her tenure at the prestigious North Carolina college, Duke settled a discrimination complaint with the Department of Education, requiring them to revise their definition of antisemitism and their anti-harassment policies after an allegedly antisemitic performance took place at an academic conference on campus. Ackman also targeted MIT’s chairman, Mark Gorenberg, who he previously accused of “apparent tax fraud” for his donations through a donor-advised fund to Parity.org, a nonprofit run by his wife that promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. Parity.org previously told Forbes they have accepted no donations from MIT, and have only accepted donations directly from Gorenberg himself.
FORBES VALUATION
We value Bill Ackman’s net worth at $4 billion. He is the founder of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, and is known for his activist stances against companies like Herbalife.