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‘Way better than TV’: Billionaire Bill Ackman turns tables on MIT, Business Insider for ‘attacks’ on wife

January 7, 2024 | | Print Article

“In the spirit of transparency,” hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has vowed he will release the dirt he digs up on the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” and Business Insider in response to what he says are “attacks on my family.”

On Friday, Business Insider ran a story accusing Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman — described by the outlet as “a former star professor at MIT” — of plagiarizing from “Wikipedia, scholars, a textbook, and other sources without any attribution.”

“My wife, [Neri Oxman] was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source,” Ackman wrote Friday on X. “Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story this evening. As a result, we don’t have time to research their claims prior to publication.”

“It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family,” he stated.

Ackman has been very vocal on X about the plagiarism scandal that rocked Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay.

“This makes no sense,” he said after it was announced that Gay would step down as president and return without a paycut to her previous position in the political science department. “How can she continue as a member of the faculty?”

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“Oxman is married to billionaire Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman, who has been vociferously campaigning for numerous university presidents to resign over what he perceives as their mishandling of student protests related to Israel’s war in Gaza,” Business Insider reported. “Ackman has termed plagiarism a ‘very serious’ offense.”

“This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews,” Ackman wrote on X. “We will begin with a review of the work of all current [MIT] faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism.”

“We will be using MIT’s own plagiarism standards,” he added, providing a link to the standards.

“How can one defend oneself when one learns about a 12-page plagiarism accusation at 540pm on Friday night when one celebrates Shabbat and you are told the article would be published shortly, in this case at 7:10pm?” he asked in a follow-up post later that evening.

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Perhaps you can’t, but if you’re a billionaire, you can go after the folks who put you in that position.

In another post, Ackman referred back to a thread he had written about “[MIT] Chairman Gorenberg and his wife’s non-profit, Parity.org.”

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“I guess [MIT] Chairman Gorenberg did not like it when I outed him for apparent tax fraud using [MIT’s] donor advised fund,” he said. By doing so, he put at risk MIT’s tax exempt status.”

“The mainstream media failed to report on the thread below. They might want to take a closer look now,” Ackman suggested. “Following up on the below thread should be a profitable exercise for an IRS whistleblower. I understand that the IRS pays attractive bounties to helpful sources.”

“If I am correct as I expect I am, you should step down from the chairmanship of MIT as it is damaging to the institution for you to remain in this role,” he told Gorenberg.


On Saturday, Ackman was still on the job.

“We have new information that strongly suggests that the Business Insider source(s) is at [MIT],” he reported.

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“My how the turntables turned. MIT is the architect of the Business Insider hit piece against Bill Ackman’s wife?” one user replied. “Honestly, X is way better than TV. Change my mind.”

Ackman released on X a lengthy two-part post detailing his position and the actions he has taken on the matter.

“Last night, no one at [MIT] had a good night’s sleep,” he began. “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.”

You can read Mr. Ackman’s full thread below:

Melissa Fine
Latest posts by Melissa Fine (see all)

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