Bill Ackman is a lifelong liberal whose political donations have been to Democrats. But, as a Harvard alumnus and a Jew, he was appalled by Claudine Gay’s incompetent and borderline anti-Semitic Congressional testimony, as well as her lack of any body of original scholarship. So for the first time, he stepped into the cultural and political fray.
The Left responded predictably, by attacking his wife, Neri Osman, who is brilliant and, coincidentally, beautiful. Business Insider studied her long-ago MIT PhD dissertation and identified a couple of examples of allegedly insufficient citation, trying to draw a parallel with Claudine Gay. Ms. Oxman responded with unusual grace. Bill Ackman initially commented on Twitter:
You know that you struck a chord when they go after your wife, in this case my love and partner in life, @NeriOxman.
I am one of the most fortunate people in the universe in large part because of Neri.
Please see her post below about today’s Business Insider piece about her… https://t.co/SJb9iFsKJY
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 4, 2024
But that wasn’t enough. In Ackman’s view, the leftists have p***ed off the wrong guy. Following the above tweet, he went on offense. Could it possibly be that reporters at Business Insider, or others at MIT, might be living in glass houses? Well, yes, it could well be:
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.
We will be using MIT’s own plagiarism standards which can be found here:
https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/what-plagiarism
We will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency.
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
More spun out from there, including an X commenter’s suggestion that he expand his search to Business Insider employees. Ackman has designated an employee of his company to receive input from citizens on plagiarism by these individuals.
The whole episode has spawned a welcome conversation on the evils of DEI, Critical Race Theory, Marxism, and so on:
DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it. https://t.co/HM94ZZmfhU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2024
As awful as the whole DEI fiasco and the prevalence of anti-Semitism in higher education are, they have had the salutary effect of waking up quite a few previously somnolent people who can do the cause of common sense considerable good.
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