Billionaire says Harvard should name pro-Hamas students

Pershing Square chief executive Bill Ackman and other CEOs have sought the identities of protesters to avoid hiring them.

Bill Ackman said chief executives had contacted him to see how they might find the names of the students behind the statement. Picture: Bloomberg

Wall Street tycoon Bill Ackman has suggested Harvard University name publicly those behind more than 30 student associations that blamed Israel for Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel so his and other firms could avoid hiring them.

The prestigious US university on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) sought to distance itself from an earlier public statement by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, co-signed by 33 student groups, that said Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”.

The billionaire head of Pershing Square capital said chief executives had contacted him to see how they might find the names of the students behind the statement, which was condemned widely, including by former president Larry Summers.

“One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts,” Mr Ackman said on social media platform X.

“If their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known.”

Students are other elite US universities shared similar sentiments: Stanford group Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in the Stanford Daily on Tuesday that the Hamas attacks were “part of the protracted struggle against settler-colonial oppression”. Separately, the Bears for Palestine group at University of California at Berkeley scheduled a “vigil to remember our martyrs” via Instagram.

Following the significant online backlash Harvard president Claudine Gay on Tuesday said she “condemned the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas”, urging debate following the terror attacks to employ “rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame”.

A 2021 survey by student publication the Harvard Crimson found 3 per cent of its faculty identified as conservative, less than 20 per cent as moderate and the rest as “extremely liberal”, which in the US context is more likely to signify supply for Palestine.

Earlier this year, Harvard was ranked last among 248 US universities for enabling free speech on campus, according to a survey of more than 55,000 undergraduates conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Mr Summers, a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, said on Tuesday that Harvard had “failed to meet the moment”.

“Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd’s death or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?” Mr Summers said on X.

Republican senator Ted Cruz asked: “What the hell is wrong with Harvard?... Their blazing hatred & anti-Semitism utterly blinding.”

Democrat congressman Jake Auchincloss told Politico the students’ statement was “morally depraved” and the subsequent Harvard leadership statement “moral cowardice”, reflecting overwhelming support for the ruling party for Israel, including from President Joe Biden.

Cornel West, a former Harvard academic and potential 2024 presidential candidate for the Green Party, defended the Harvard students, saying in a statement they were “largely right but lacking nuance”.

I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their… https://t.co/7kzGOAGwp9

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 10, 2023