Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, wants to ensure that he does not ever hire any of the Harvard students who signed a controversial letter about Israel, and other CEOs have also joined in on asking for the students' names to be released. The statement was written by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and signed by more than 30 other student organizations at Harvard. Some of the organizations have since taken back their support. The statement said that those who endorsed the statement "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."
“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence," the statement continued. According to student paper The Harvard Crimson, a spokesperson for the organization that wrote the letter later said that “the PSC staunchly opposes violence against civilians — Palestinian, Israeli, or other.”
Many were outraged by the letter, including Bill Ackman, who posted on X saying that several CEOs have asked for a list of the members of the organizations that supported the letter "as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members." "If, in fact, their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known," he wrote on X. Several other CEOs responded to his statement, expressing their support. Jonathan Neman, CEO of Sweetgreen, wrote, "I would like to know so I know never to hire these people."
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In a follow-up statement on Instagram, Harvard's Palestine Solidarity Committee announced that they were postponing their solidarity vigil "due to credible safety concerns and threats against student security." A statement from the organization also said that the organization has received "racist hate speech and death threats." "Our statement's purpose was clear: to address the root cause of all the violence unfolding," the statement said. The organization also expressed that its members "are appalled at the administration's failure to protect its students' safety."
