Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackerman took to X to share some thoughts, not just about Harvard, anti-semitism, racism, and anti-racism, but a deep-dive analysis of DEI, the appointment of Claudine Gay as President, and inside baseball at Harvard, which he suggests should result in its full board tendering their resignations.
It is a well-written look at Harvard after October 7th and an eye-opening excursion for Ackerman. He shares with us his discovery of how sinister DEI is and offers a great deal of thought, some of which looks like this.
An ideology [DEI] that portrays a bicameral world of oppressors and the oppressed based principally on race or sexual identity is a fundamentally racist ideology that will likely lead to more racism rather than less. A system where one obtains advantages by virtue of one’s skin color is a racist system, and one that will generate resentment and anger among the un-advantaged who will direct their anger at the favored groups.
The country has seen burgeoning resentment and anger grow materially over the last few years, and the DEI movement is an important contributor to our growing divisiveness. Resentment is one of the most important drivers of racism. And it is the lack of equity, i.e, fairness, in how DEI operates, that contributes to this resentment.
He later announces that (FYI – ODEIB is Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging).
The ODEIB should be shut down, and the staff should be terminated. The ODEIB has already taken down much of the ideology and strategies that were on its website when I and others raised concerns about how the office operates and who it does and does not represent. Taking down portions of the website does not address the fundamentally flawed and racist ideology of this office, and calls into further question the ODEIB’s legitimacy. Why would the ODEIB take down portions of its website when an alum questioned its legitimacy unless the office was doing something fundamentally wrong or indefensible?
As an aside, does inclusion not also mean belonging? I’m not a Harvard grad, didn’t graduate college at all, though I wasted some money on it. I don’t suppose being included is as warm and fuzzy as belonging, but Ackerman is correct. That office needs to go away. After the discovery of the UNH Bias-Free Language Guide, the University did something similar. It retooled web pages and made some things disappear, but as I noted then until you cut that budget, close that office, and perp-walk those activists out the door, the poison was still in the well.
And it is still in the well, has seeped into corporate culture, and is tainting culture and the nation. Harvard’s embarrassing few months of anti-semitism are – as Ackerman notes – but a canary in a coal mine. The real issue is DEI and the culture that has allowed it to metastasize. “The techniques that DEI has used to squelch the opposition are found in the Red Scares and McCarthyism of decades.” DEI is oppression in the name of anti-oppression. Racist in the name of anti-racism. A means to creat class division in pursuit of Socialism – whose only goal is Communism.
Ackerman’s remarks amount to several words, far too many to share outside its original tweet, but thanks to embedding, we don’t need to do that. We can share the tweet, and so we have.
There’s a lot there, and I think you’ll find it worth your time and attention. Click ‘show more’ for the rest. If you are not on X, I’ve copied it into a PDF you can view here.
In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about.
I first became concerned about @Harvard when 34 Harvard student organizations, early on the morning of October 8th before Israel had taken any military…
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 3, 2024