By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

Billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman has been busy defending himself for his recent staunch support of Israel.

The hedge fund titan, who is founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, was appalled when he heard that 31 Harvard Organizations joined to write a letter holding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ brutal and savage Oct. 7 massacre, which killed more than 1200 Israelis.  As a Harvard alumnus, he made waves last month for demanding that the University supply a list of the signatories of the controversial letter condemning Israel, entitled “Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine”.  As reported by the NY Post, he had then doubled down with a push to companies to refrain from hiring these individuals.

Right off the bat, he was slammed by a Harvard law school student, who called it “harassment”.  Ackman had defended his stance on X, formerly Twitter.  “If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims?” Ackman wrote on X. “I don’t think so.” “Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims?  I don’t think so.”  Ackman added, “It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment.”

Recently, Ackman was called out by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who alleged that he was attempting to blacklist those students.  Ackman, the 57-year-old who boasts a net worth of $3.6 billion, pushed back on those claims in a heated debate with Greenwald on X.  On Thursday, Ackman said he made no demands that they be banned from Wall Street, rather he doesn’t feel they will be good fit in his workplace.  “I never compiled a ‘No-Hire list,’” Ackman wrote on X Thursday.  “Rather, I simply posted that the students who support the statement that Israel is ‘solely responsible’ for the evil and barbaric acts of Hamas are not individuals that I would like to hire for any company in which we are involved.”

The Post reported, Greenwald, who hosts the news show “System Update” that’s uploaded to Rumble, had tweeted a video of an interview with two Harvard students who alleged that Ackman put them on a “No-Hire list compiled by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.”  In that interview, Amari Butler, a signor of the anti-Israel letter and a member of the student group African American Resistance Organization (AARO), spoke of the billboard-bearing box truck.  The truck is reportedly going around campus bearing pictures of the signors and branding them as anti-Semites.

Per the Post, the “Doxxing Truck”, is reportedly deployed by news watchdog Accuracy in Media, to expose Ivy Leaguers who allegedly signed the letter blaming Israel for the attacks.  Butler said the trucks were “shameful” attacks and made the students out to be “racist.”  Butler also said that “the vast majority of the people being doxxed and harassed…are either black, Muslim, Arab students, Palestinian.”

Ackman shot back in his post, saying he had no “involvement with trucks driving around the @Harvard campus.”  He also refuted Butler’s assertions that race has anything to do with his hiring motives.  “Despite the young woman’s statement to the contrary, not seeking to hire supporters of Hamas does not make me a racist,” he wrote.