Free Republic

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman on Tuesday said Harvard University, one of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest, should not be entitled to taxpayer funds when the school wastes money on what he calls “administrative bloat.” Ackman, who earned undergraduate and business degrees from Harvard more than three decades ago, was speaking hours after the Trump administration said it was freezing future grants to Harvard. He also criticized the school’s investment policies, saying the Ivy League university is facing a financial crisis and that its $53 billion endowment is “poorly invested.” ... “They have lost all future grants, their tax exemptions are...

Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, a staunch President Trump ally, has warned the world is on the brink of a “self-induced economic nuclear winter” – as he begged the commander in chief to pause his sweeping tariffs. “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” Ackman wrote in a lengthy X post Sunday night. “May cooler heads prevail.” Ackman, who endorsed Trump’s run for President, issued the stark...

……. The outreach appears to include venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick. Antonio Gracias, a former Tesla director, and Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company, were named too. The latter two are affiliated with Musk’s many companies. And it seems that cohort is involved in the planning but, more specifically, is expected to work on technical challenges to collecting data on federal employees and programs. Andreessen is recruiting talent, according to the Washington Post. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is supposedly charged with...

A number of my good friends and family have been surprised about my decision to support @realDonaldTrump for president. They have been surprised because my political giving history has been mostly to Democrats, my voting registration has typically been Democrat (in NY, you must be registered to the party in order to vote in the primary, and usually the Republican candidate has no chance to win), and many of our philanthropic initiatives have supported issues that are consistent with Democratic priorities. All of the above said, I have always considered myself to be a centrist and/or moderate, and I have...

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman ripped into the Biden-Harris administration Friday, posting to X (formerly known as Twitter) 33 “catalysts” for his “losing total confidence” in the Democratic Party. Ackman formally endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hours after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Many of Ackman’s friends and his family were “surprised” by the endorsement, he wrote on X, taking the opportunity to dismiss claims he wanted financial benefits or a role in a potential Trump administration.

The Maldives government will ban Israelis from the Indian Ocean archipelago, known for luxury resorts, as public anger in the predominantly Muslim nation rises over the war in Gaza. The president’s office said Sunday that the Cabinet decided to change laws to prevent Israeli passport holders from entering the country and to establish a subcommittee to oversee the process. It said President Mohamed Muizzu will appoint a special envoy to assess the Palestinian needs and to launch a fundraising campaign.

Buzzy healthcare company Hims & Hers lost nearly $210 million in stock value in a single day after the company’s CEO said he and other executives were “eager” to hire anti-Israel student protesters who’ve faced disciplinary actions from their universities. The online sexual health and pharmaceutical company plummet 8% on Friday from its opening price of $12.24 to $11.26 — just two days after Palestinian-American CEO Andrew Dudum said companies would be happy to have the protesters and encouraged them to apply to Hims and Hers. “Moral courage > College degree,” Dudum tweeted on Thursday, amid the nationwide anti-Israel protests...

A Harvard University-affiliated teaching hospital is seeking to retract or correct dozens of papers authored by four of its top researchers — including the hospital’s CEO — following a probe into allegations of data falsification. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston has already initiated six retractions to papers and 31 others are in the process of being corrected, the hospital’s research integrity officer, Dr. Barrett Rollins, confirmed to the Harvard Crimson. The corrections follow claims of data falsification leveled against the cancer institute’s CEO, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, chief operating officer Dr. William Hahn, director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program...

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman reacted to former President Donald Trump’s landslide victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses by warning Democrats that incumbent President Joe Biden is toast. “If you haven’t figured it out already, it is now abundantly clear that @realDonaldTrump is going to crush @POTUS,” the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management wrote on his X social media account on Tuesday. Ackman, who has become far more vocal in the public sphere since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and the subsequent eruption of antisemitism on college campuses, repeated his call for the 81-year-old Biden to...

For a long time, people (including me) have been calling for major changes in higher education. Now someone is doing something about it. Hedge-fund tycoon Bill Ackman is waging war to make universities accountable. Ackman started his campaign by demanding the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth after the trio’s shambolic performance before Congress on antisemitic harassment on their campuses. Magill and Gay are now gone, and Kornbluth is worried. Penn’s board of trustees pushed Magill out pretty quickly. Gay, being a diversity hire, was harder...

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 actions in Gaza, came out publicly in support of Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization, holding Israel ‘solely responsible’ for Hamas’ barbaric and heinous acts. How could this be? I wondered. When I saw President Gay’s initial statement about the massacre, it provided more context (!) for the student groups’ statement...

At least a dozen business executives have endorsed Bill Ackman’s call to deny hiring members of student groups at Harvard who signed on to a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ deadly attack on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people, including at least 22 Americans. Jonathan Newman, the CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, was among a group of business honchos who seconded Ackman in urging that the signatories of the letter circulated by the a coalition of 34 Harvard student groups who “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” “I would like to know so I know...

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says the US government should consider a "highly dilutive" bailout of Silicon Valley Bank amid jitters about its financial position. The bank's failure "could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash," Ackman said in a series of tweets on Thursday. "If private capital can't provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov't preferred bailout should be considered," he said.

Billionaire investor William Ackman liquidated a $1.1 billion bet on Netflix on Wednesday, locking in a loss of more than $400 million as the streaming service's stock plunged following news that it lost subscribers for the first time in a decade. Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management made an abrupt U-turn, selling the 3.1 million shares it had bought just three months ago as Netflix' shares tumbled 35% to $226.19.