In a tactical victory for Bill Ackman and his posse of billionaire hedge fund swindlers, Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned, ostensibly due to charges of academic plagiarism. Few believe this to be the actual reason; as internet commentator Michael Tracey put it in a tweet, “Launching a campaign to destroy the Harvard president for her alleged failure to punish anti-Semitic and anti-Israel speech, then scouring for anything and everything to tangentially nail her on, then claiming the real reason for going after her was plagiarism all along—clever.”
Ackman had used his own Twitter/X account to pursue an extensive vendetta against Gay, both because of her purported softness on anti-Zionist speech on campus, and also because of her association with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), another of Ackman’s ideological hobby horses. Gay was one of the three university presidents who were excoriated by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congressional hearings, held in response to Ackman’s campaign. Two have now resigned. The third, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, remains an active target. The upsurge on college campuses of protest against the IDF genocide in Gaza is worrisome to the neocon establishment, who need the support, or minimally the docility, of the population in order to continue their drive for global conflict.
