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...

In a bombshell interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan tore into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on President Donald Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally—a rally that, curiously, was the only Trump event CNN bothered to stream live during the entire campaign. Now, billionaire investor Bill Ackman is demanding answers, calling for an investigation into why the far-left network broke its pattern of ignoring Trump rallies just in time to broadcast an attempt on his life. During the podcast, Rogan and Musk pointed out the troubling anomalies in the Butler...

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.

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...

A fundraiser to throw a “rager” for the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill frat brothers who protected the Stars and Stripes from an anti-Israel mob this week has raised an eye-watering $400,000. And billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is a fan — donating $10,000 to the cause. The GoFundMe contribution — spotted Wednesday night by an eagle-eyed X user — will help throw the patriotic pack of Pi Kappa Phi members “the party they deserve,” according to a description on the fundraising site.

A college in California became the site of chaos Monday evening when a group of students took over a university building as pro-Palestine protests continue to sweep across the nation's campuses. Protesters set up a shanty town within the California Polytechnic University's Siemens Hall equipped with beds and tents, reports KIEM-TV. The school is located in Arcata in rural northern California, close to the border with Oregon. As the protests gain attention worldwide, billionaire investor Bill Ackman, an outspoken supporter of Israel, tweeted took aim at college leadership.

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...

Activist billionaire Bill Ackman says President Biden is too old to run for re-election and should drop out of the race for the White House. Ackman told CNBC’s “Squawkbox” he does not think Biden should run for re-election. “So one, I’ve always been a centrist, always believed in supporting whoever is best for the country — Republican, independent, Democrat,” said Ackman. “I think it’s really important that Biden steps aside.” Ackman, who was being interviewed about his recent fight with Harvard University, only made his remarks after being asked about the 2024 presidential race, Fox News reported. “Just on the...

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said he can no longer be “associated with” the Democratic Party over its support of “racist” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.In an interview on CNBC Friday, the Pershing Square Capital Management founder said that the Dems had “morphed” into woke martyrs.“I was a Bill Clinton Democrat and what the party has morphed into is not something I want to be associated with,” he said on “Squawk Box.”

Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night’s sleep. Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus. Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work...

Billionaires and business leaders are arguing over whether DEI efforts should exist. Bill Ackman and Elon Musk say diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are "racist." It's the abbreviation that has billionaire bigwigs pretty worked up — and it's not AI. The talk about DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — isn't about how to jumpstart efforts that once seemed almost universally lauded. It's about what's next for these programs following attacks on DEI by several high-wattage names in business. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who became a vocal critic of how Harvard handled antisemitic rhetoric on campus, is now targeting DEI....

President Trump’s heroic response to the assassination attempt left many Americans in awe and created a wave of support. Following the incident, Trump received a flood of high-profile endorsements, including Elon Musk, Jake Paul, and Jim Caviezel.Of course, the biggest name to step forward is Elon Musk. Right after the assassination attempt, he was quick to throw his full support behind President Trump.NBC News: Elon Musk posted on X that he “fully” endorses Donald Trump moments after the former president and presumptive Republican nominee was rushed off stage by secret service members following gunshots at a rally in Pennsylvania on...

A friend who supports Biden and hates Trump complained to me this morning that I am being narcissistic by sharing my views publicly on the presidential election, and that I should keep my views to myself.I explained to my friend that part of being a good citizen is participating in the political process. If one believes that one candidate is materially better for the country than another, one should advocate in any way that they can for that candidate. This is not narcissism. It is patriotism. All of us have an obligation to stand up and be counted.

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...

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...

The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza on Harvard's campus. An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017. Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted...

Billionaire Harvard donor Bill Ackman is calling for the resignation and replacement of the school's board, which he says is just as much to blame for its problems as ousted president Claudine Gay.Gay resigned yesterday, finally bowing to calls to stand down a month after her calamitous congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and amid growing accusations of academic plagiarism throughout her scholar career...Unsatisfied with Gay's resignation, he says the school's leadership is so deeply flawed that it requires a total overhaul.'The Corporation Board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure which enabled them to obtain...

Infamous former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli and Howard Schiller, the interim chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Valeant, just faced Congress. Legislators on Thursday wanted them to answer for dramatic drug-price increases that affect the lives of Americans. Shkreli caught national attention when his company purchased a lifesaving drug called Daraprim and then raised the price by over 5,000%. Wall Street was closely watching Schiller; Valeant's stock was a darling until accusations of malfeasance from a short seller and government scrutiny over pricing chopped off a quarter of its stock price last year. At the hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland)...

"News that Turing, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and other drugmakers have bought rights to old, cheap medicines that are the only treatment for serious diseases and then hiked prices severalfold has angered patients. It's triggered government investigations, politicians' proposals to fight "price gouging," heavy media scrutiny and a big slump in biotech stock prices." "Turing's Shkreli, under fire from all sides, said late last month that he would lower the price of Daraprim, but hasn't so far. A Turing spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday but recently noted the company is capping patient copayments at $10."