Ackman's Agony

an open letter to Bill Ackman regarding his recent and past travails

Yesterday, an acquantaince on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bill Ackman, billionaire’s anguished response to the New York Times piece about his resentment of his alma mater.

I’m going to reprise the thread I wrote about Ackman’s agony in this post and in the next one, for paid subscribers, will outline an actual plan for Ackman if he really wanted to go after the corruption of higher education and the Ivy League (he doesn’t obviously) purely within the framework of liberalism and democracy and transparency, he would follow my insider guidelines.

But here is the X thread (slightly revised)—

Ackman treated his gift to Harvard like a stock market “put.” Harvard treated it quite differently. Please excuse grammatical mistakes. I’m doing this quickly. I’m in Beijing. Some day I will rewrite this properly as a play.

Dear Bill,

In my experience and understanding of University Development and Advancement officers (euphemism for fundraisers) — the ones who solicit the big $$$ from potential donors — they are obsessed with hitting their numbers. So in the year when the Harvard Development Officer, let’s call him Jock Brockman III reached out to you and you offered $10 million in stock of X company, Jock was thrilled because that was $10 million on his ledger.

I wrote about what has happened to unversities when they got into bed with hedge funds here.

You understand numbers better than I do, so you wil be chastened to learn that despite your alleged billions, your donation counted as 1 donation on Brockman’s ledger for that year as well. $10 million worth of stock in X company from 1 donor.

So the Misses Lewisthorpes of Waspville, MA who pledged their father Learned Lewisthorpe’s fortune to Harvard upon the widowed sisters’ demise also count as 1 donor (in the name of Learned) and although they may have a meagre pittance of a donation to make let’s say $1 million, Learned = Bill in the ledgers of Jock Brockman’s books.

Now it turns out that Jock Brockman III contacted you during a messy divorce. You were illiquid, but Jock is a good tennis player and you have had many thrilling matches ending in tiebreaks at the most expensive country clubs on the Eastern Seaboard, so you sign over some stock to Harvard, $10 million worth on paper, of a company you don’t really care about. The stipulation is that it’s no less for Harvard if that stock falls below on liquidation of stock, you can make it up when you have more cash and the harridan is satisfied, but if the stock increases in value, Harvard gets to keep the $10 million to do what it will, and you get to designate what you want Harvard to do with the gains.

Also, you needed some tax relief that year, divorce, etc. So whatever happens with Company X, you get to write off $10 million from your tax bill.

Well lo and behold, Company X is very successful and $10 million worth of stock is now worth $85 million. You call Harvard Management Corporation. HMC says, it sold the back to the company years ago at $10 million. You are furious and Jock is not returning your calls. Claudine is not returning your calls.

You want Harvard to earmark $75 million for your discretion, perhaps to beef up their already beefed up Behavioral Economics Dept, but they are not returning your calls!

Bill, Harvard keeps two sets of books so to speak, one for its donors, financiers and capitalist, brutes like and sort of like who went to public high schools and believe in the raw power of the intellect, and another set of books for genteel Professional Managerial Class curators of prestige and now the second set of books has kicked into gear. Harvard must preserve its academic and integrity from vulgar people like you and vulgar Marxists like me. Claudine Gay will be protected and Jock will be courting new donors.

In your petulant Xeet, you say that $75 million is not a lot for Harvard. Harvard has a $50 billion endowment. And that is whole point dear Bill. It’s not a lot of money to them. Jock got to dine out on it. The HMC got to get cash from the sale of stock and $10 million was put toward gilded sconces in the President’s Office. Whatever. That was unencumbered money.

You and I didn’t go to Philips Exeter like Claudine Gay. We’re angrier people. You’re a billionaire and a bully, I an angry salarywoman who went to the other Ivy. We come from ethnic strivers, out of Westchester, into the Ivy League. I guess we could have gone to prep school but our immigrant parents thought good public schools were enough. Not so the Gays.

The more you rail against the PMC guardians of virtue and freedom, the more they will see you as “resentful” — bullying. Bill — the money you made was supposed to buy you freedom, but why do you seem so unfree to make the changes that your billions thrown around are supposed to realize?

In my next post, I will outline what a lot of money can do to the hypocrisies enshrined in our institutions of higher education. I am a materialist after all, and I would like to see the hypocrisy of elites undone. I don’t expect you a capitalist to help me in my endeavors. I only have reason and nothing more to back up my plan, but I do think it would be a good one, were I a liberal as you say you are, with deep pockets.