Billionaire Bill Ackman is stepping up his campaign to overhaul Harvard University by throwing his considerable influence behind a slate of four outsider candidates vying to join the university’s board of overseers.
The move by Ackman takes a page out of the playbook that made him successful on Wall Street. Activist investors like Ackman often nominate directors to join the boards of companies they are trying to transform.
Except in this case the Harvard graduate is not trying to juice the earnings-per-share of a corporation but fix what he sees as the shortfalls of a nearly 400-year-old Ivy League school facing enormous challenges. Ackman waged an intense battle against Claudine Gay, who stepped down as Harvard president last week amid a firestorm of controversy around plagiarism and campus antisemitism allegations.
Normally, candidates for the 30-member Harvard Board of Overseers are nominated by the university’s alumni association. However, Ackman is now backing four write-in candidates running under a slate called Renew Harvard, the billionaire’s firm confirmed to CNN on Wednesday.
The dissident candidates are all US military veterans between the age of 36 and 38, according to Logan Leslie, one of the candidates. They are pledging to “restore leadership excellence to Harvard,” uphold free speech, protect all students and “remedy operational and endowment mismanagement,” according to the group’s website.
“We truly feel called to do this now,” Leslie, who has spent 20 years in the US military, told CNN in a phone interview. “We feel strongly that with a mandate and getting outside voices on the board, we can demand better accountability and leadership.”
Leslie said he and the other board candidates frustrated by the direction of Harvard approached Ackman about the idea late last year and the billionaire was very receptive and quickly pledged his support.
Leslie, the founder and CEO of Northern Rock, which buys and operates a portfolio of small businesses, said the group held multiple calls with Ackman over the holidays. He described Ackman as a “great sounding board” given the valuable lessons he’s learned “in the trenches doing this on the business side,” but stressed this slate is independent of the billionaire.
“We don’t want to be viewed as Ackman’s slate. We are independent voices. He’s not on the slate,” Leslie said.
Julia Pollak, another candidate on the slate, told CNN she’s been concerned about a lack of free expression at Harvard for years and recent events compelled her to act.
“What happened at the school the past few months has created a groundswell of support for change,” said Pollak, a former drilling reservist in the US Navy who currently works as chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
Pollak, who was born and raised in South Africa and today has three children, recently launched a webpage to begin a solo bid for the board but was approached last Friday about joining the slate.
“Harvard needs to change. Bringing fresh young blood onto the board of overseers can help with that,” Ackman told Reuters, which first reported news of his support for the four candidates.
The other outsiders getting endorsed by Ackman are Zoe Bedell, an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, and Alec Williams, a Navy Seal who serves as a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserves.
Harvard did not respond to requests for comment.
New members are elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers each spring. This board is led by alumni and directs the assessment of Harvard’s schools and departments. It is separate from the Harvard Corporation, the university’s top board responsible for hiring and firing the university president.
Led by billionaire Penny Pritzker, the secretive but powerful Harvard Corporation has come under fire for its handling of the scandal surrounding Gay.
Yale professor and Harvard graduate Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told CNN last week that the Harvard Corporation deserves a failing grade because it has “damaged the brand significantly.”
Former Facebook executive Sam Lessin, another Harvard graduate also running for the Harvard Board of Overseers, has joined calls for Pritzker to step down.
A Harvard spokesperson told CNN last week that Pritzker is not resigning.
In an email to supporters on Wednesday, Lessin said the fact that additional Harvard graduates are running for the board “shows real alum engagement” but also expressed concern that the breadth of the pool will make it harder for anyone to succeed.
Write-in candidates must each get 3,238 alumni nominations by January 31st, according to Renew Harvard. Lessin said that, by rule, only two write-in candidates can make it onto the ballot.
“I get Bill Ackman putting forward a ‘slate’ of 4 candidates, but the reality is that given the nature of the election rules, this is likely to hurt everyone’s ability to actually win their way onto the ballot,” Lessin said.
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