Harvard alumni backed by billionaires not excluded from board voting By Reuters

© Reuters.

Svea Herbst-Bayliss

(Reuters) – Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who has led a campaign criticizing Harvard University for its practices related to anti-Semitism, plagiarism and financial management, said on Friday he would join four presidential candidates in the race for power. The attempt failed. Ivy League School Board of Trustees.

Another candidate backed by Facebook (NASDAQ:) founder Mark Zuckerberg also failed to secure a spot on the Harvard Board of Supervisors ballot.

The two, who acted independently, endorsed the candidates after Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned last month amid criticism of her handling of anti-Semitism on campus following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and allegations that she plagiarized from her previous work. . Educational experience.

Gay and Harvard denied the allegations. Gay, who was Harvard’s first black president, said in a statement at the time that his resignation was in the best interest of the Ivy League school given the controversy.

The Board of Supervisors is the school’s second highest governing body, with the power to approve or reject the hiring of Harvard’s president. Each year, five seats on the 30-member Board of Trustees are up for election, and only Harvard graduates can vote.

Some candidates said Harvard notified them late Friday that they did not meet the necessary criteria to get on the ballot. Zoe Bedell, one of the four candidates supported by Ackman, said she, Alec Williams, Logan Leslie and Julia Pollak each received between 2,300 and 2,700 votes. Sam Lessin, a candidate backed by Zuckerberg, said Harvard told him he received 2,901 votes. 3,238 votes were needed to secure a spot on the ballot.

A vote on the board will take place later this year.

The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the vote results.

Ackman did not respond to a request for comment.

Ackman, who attended Harvard’s undergraduate and business school and has donated about $50 million to the university, has been one of the most vocal critics of Gay and her campus leadership. He told Reuters earlier this year that Harvard needed change and that the slate he supports would bring new blood to the board.

The Harvard Alumni Association interviews and submits candidates to the ballot, and those who try to get on the ballot without the association’s approval, like the candidates supported by Zuckerberg and Ackman, face big odds.

In 2016, Harvard increased the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot, unless approved by the association, from 200 to 1 percent of those eligible to vote in previous elections.

Harvard argued that keeping nominations public could allow special interest groups to hijack the process, similar to political campaigns.

A message that “resonated”

Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and former U.S. Treasury secretary, gave a speech in support of anti-establishment candidates earlier this week. He wrote on social media platform wrote.

Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard to found Facebook in 2004 and pledged to donate $500 million to artificial intelligence research, lent his influence to Lessin, an investor and former colleague at the social media giant.

Ackman endorsed a group of four candidates called Renew Harvard, who advocated for free speech, protected students from bullying and harassment, and addressed the university’s financial management problems.

The group noted that the university’s $50.7 billion endowment, which returned 2.9% in fiscal 2023, significantly underperformed the overall market’s nearly 20% gain. Ackman shared this criticism.

An alumnus of the Renew Harvard slate was Bedell, an assistant U.S. attorney. Leslie, an entrepreneur who acquires and operates a small business in Northern Rock; Williams, a former naval officer and investor; and Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

“It’s clear that our message has really resonated with the Harvard community, considering we were able to garner so many votes in just three weeks,” Bedell told Reuters. “So we know these issues are important and we’re not giving up on them.” “I won’t,” he said.

The Renew Harvard group plans to try again next year to become a write-in candidate on the ballot, Bedell said.

Many other candidates have also launched campaigns, including historian Todd Fine and attorney Silverglate.

Although the Board of Supervisors is not as powerful as the smaller Harvard Corporation, which directly oversees university operations, it still exerts influence. The supervisor’s main tool is the so-called visitation process, which allows him to ask questions and conduct evaluations of Harvard faculty and departments.

The last successful challenges were in 2020 and 2021. At the time, Harvard Forward, a coalition of alumni calling for the university’s endowment to divest from fossil fuels, had elected four candidates to the Board of Supervisors.

In 1989, dissident alumni supported a petition to elect Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the board of trustees in an effort to force Harvard to divest its interests in companies that did business in South Africa during apartheid.