Photo/Harvard website

On January 2, local time, Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, announced her resignation. She was the first black female president in Harvard’s history, and also the one with the shortest-serving term. Gay took office as president only in July 2023, and served for only half a year.

Gay’s resignation stemmed from a cultural clash on American college campuses caused by a new round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the conflict broke out, many students launched protests against Israel’s attack on Palestine. In December 2023, Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik summoned the presidents of three elite universities, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and Harvard, to attend a congressional hearing. The three presidents were seen as evasive in their responses to the students’ “anti-Semitic” remarks, causing a huge uproar.

The hearing event pressured the three presidents tremendously, and the Penn president announced his resignation four days later. However, Gay refused to compromise, and Harvard’s officials also expressed support for her. Thereafter, the focus of public pressure shifted to Gay’s academic misconduct allegations. Harvard’s investigation found that Gay’s paper had “a few insufficient citations”, but did not violate Harvard’s academic standards.

However, under continuous pressure, Gay finally announced her resignation. In her resignation letter, she said that “opposing hate and adhering to academic rigor” were the two pillars of her life, and these two points were questioned, putting her under great pressure. In addition, she also received “personal attacks and threats ignited by racial hostility”. After consulting with Harvard’s board of directors, Gay resigned only in the “best interest of Harvard”.

Behind this pressure campaign that lasted for months, there was an important pusher, Bill Ackman, the founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square. According to Forbes, Ackman’s personal net worth is as high as $4 billion. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Ackman made a profit of $2.6 billion by betting heavily on shorting US stocks, making him famous overnight.

Ackman is a Harvard graduate and one of the important donors. He has donated tens of millions of dollars to his alma mater’s economics department and rowing team. Since October 2023, in response to the voices of students who support Palestinians and oppose Israel on Harvard’s campus, Ackman angrily said that the identities of these students should be made public, to ensure that his company would not hire them. This suggestion was endorsed by many Jewish CEOs.

Ackman’s main way of exerting pressure was to constantly post critical comments on his X platform account with nearly a million fans. In the past month alone, he tweeted about “Harvard” and “Gay” no less than 100 times. On January 2, he also posted a 4,000-word tweet, listing issues such as “white hatred” and the policy of increasing “diversity” in universities.

Ackman’s views were recognized by many of Harvard’s “sponsors”. According to The New York Times, at least six donors agreed with Ackman, but did not dare to speak out publicly like Ackman, fearing to damage their relationship with Harvard.

The reason why Ackman was so high-profile was not only because of the differences in public issues, but also because of his personal grudges with Harvard and Gay. The New York Times reported that in the past few years, Ackman had continuously given Harvard various suggestions, but was ignored.

More than three years ago, Ackman had suggested that Harvard University set up COVID-19 testing facilities, so that students and faculty could return to campus, but was not adopted. More than a year ago, Gay, who was then the dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, had visited Ackman, and the two had a pleasant conversation. So in November 2023, when he proposed to Gay how to deal with the campus “anti-Semitism” issue, he thought he would be accepted by Gay, but he was coldly treated again.

Ackman’s victory in Gay’s resignation aroused the concern of the American higher education community about the influence of donors. Gregg Gonsalves, an infectious disease expert at Yale University, said on X platform: “He (Ackman) thinks his money equals wisdom, and even if not, he thinks (money) gives him the right to bully at will.”

Gay’s resignation as president was not Ackman’s ultimate goal. He continued to question the rationality of Gay’s remaining as a Harvard professor, and continued to criticize the president of MIT. Ironically, on January 5, Business Insider said that Ackman’s Israeli wife, MIT professor Neri Oxman, also had plagiarism problems in her doctoral dissertation. The “cultural clash” in the American higher education sector is far from over.