Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images and Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for The New York Times
- Bill Ackman took aim at MIT President Sally Kornbluth after Claudine Gay's resignation from Harvard.
- Gay resigned as president of Harvard after her response to antisemitism and alleged plagiarism.
- Ackman began calling for the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn to resign in December.
Bill Ackman is just one more resignation from getting his way.
Ackman on Tuesday took aim at his final target in a dispute over antisemitism at some of the US's top schools: MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
"Et tu Sally?" Ackman posted on X after the news of Harvard President Claudine Gay's resignation.
Ackman, a Harvard alum and the billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, had called for the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT to resign after they appeared hesitant to denounce calls for violence against the Jewish population during a congressional hearing in December.
Penn's Liz Magill resigned in December. Harvard's Gay resigned Tuesday. And MIT's Kornbluth remains the last of the three who's still in her job.
On Tuesday, an MIT spokeswoman told Business Insider: "Our leadership remains focused on ensuring the work of MIT continues."
Ackman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
On December 12, Harvard's board announced Gay would remain in her role as president and reaffirmed its support for her leadership.
But in the weeks following their decision, Gay faced multiple allegations of plagiarism and continued calls for her resignation.
Ackman had also called out Gay's alleged plagiarism. And he'd originally bashed all three presidents for what he said was their failures to address antisemitism boiling up on their campuses, especially in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
"Why has antisemitism exploded on campus and around the world?" Ackman wrote on X in December. "Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context."
If a company CEO had given similar answers in a congressional testimony, Ackman said, "he or she would be toast within the hour."
For her part, Kornbluth, when asked at the December hearing whether she'd heard chants of "intifada" on MIT's campus, said: "I have heard chants, which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people."
Intifada refers to Palestinian uprisings against Israel, often violent.
Kornbluth also said at the hearing: "As an American, as a Jew, and as a human being, I abhor antisemitism, and my administration is combatting it actively. Since October 7th, my campus communications have been crystal clear about the dangers of antisemitism and about the atrocity of the Hamas terror attack."