Billionaire Bill Ackman blasts Harvard over video of Pro-Palestine student disrupting lecture with bullhorn even though college's rules forbid classes from being disrupted

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has continued to slam his alma-mater Harvard University, accusing the school and its president of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of Hamas' barbaric assault on Israel in October.

On Sunday, Ackman, 57, posted a video showing a pro-Palestinian student disrupting a class with a bullhorn, ranting about Harvard's apparent role in supporting Israel and chanting: 'Free free Palestine.'

'This is what you get for $73,600/year at ⁦@Harvard,' Ackman wrote in the caption. The Pershing Square Capital Management founder, who has a net worth of $3.8 billion, graduated with a degree in social studies from Harvard in 1988 and later attained an MBA in 1992. 

The school's official rule book bans the disruption of classes and is 'regarded as unacceptable obstruction of the essential processes of the University.' 

This weekend saw a mob of University of Pennsylvania students chanting 'intifada,' meaning 'uprising,' through the streets. Ackman too posted that video which was accompanied by the caption: 'Stop telling American Jews not to worry.'

Meanwhile, campus Jewish student organization, Harvard Hillel, said in an Instagram post that students were disrupted in classes by protesters who made calls to 'globalize the intifada' and for the elimination of Israel 'from the river to the sea.' 

'These calls for genocide and anti-Jewish violence throughout the world represent antisemitic speech and are not protected by the University's community standards,' the Hillel statement read.  

Last week, Ackman took aim at Harvard President Claudine Gray over her 'failed leadership' and called the decision not to attend an 'insult'. Ackman, 57, offered to fly Gay to Washington D.C. immediately after the documentary is screened at Harvard, where she is due to testify to Congress about the explosion in anti-Semitism at the college.

After posting the video, Ackman posted an open letter to Gray on X. ' Years ago, Harvard stopped being a place where all perspectives were welcome. Harvard is a place where loud, hate-filled protests appear to be encouraged, but where faculty and students can't share points of view that are inconsistent with the accepted narrative on campus,' he wrote in part. 

Ackman went on to describe the curriculum as following 'the same playbook ideology. Ideology poses as coursework.'

Writing about current conflict, Ackman said: 'Indigenous peoples are presented as in need of justice and reparations. Jews are presented as white people. It is therefore ok to hate Israel and Jews as they are deemed to be oppressors.'

'Why are the protests only about Israel versus other conflicts in the Middle East and around the globe where Palestinians and other civilians were killed? Israel is the rare case where we have a hot conflict between people that are deemed 'white' versus people of color,' he added. 

 Ackman, who is married to American-Israeli designer, Neri Oxman, has pinned tweet at the top of his X page in which he describes himself as both 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' but 'anti-terrorist.' 

The billionaire, who is son of real estate magnate Lawrence Ackman, has four children, one with Oxman, who he has been married to since 2019, and three with his first wife, Karen Herskovitz. 

Online records show that Ackman has primarily donated to Democratic candidates including Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen. Chuck Schumer. 

He was an early supporter of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign. 

On Thursday, Ackman fawned over X owner Elon Musk's interview in which he told advertisers who left his platform to 'go f*** yourself.'

'Musk is a free speech absolutist which I respect. I think he is entirely correct that he and @X are treated unfairly and inconsistently by advertisers,' he wrote.

Musk has faced a torrent of criticism ever since he agreed with a user who falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people. 

Musk in his post said the user, who referenced the 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory, was speaking 'the actual truth.'

On Wednesday Musk said he had 'handed a loaded gun' to both detractors and antisemitic people, describing his post as possibly the worst he had made during a history of messages that included many 'foolish' ones.

While the Anti-Defamation League's New England chapter called for Harvard to hold the protesters accountable. 

'Yesterday's disruption of classes @Harvarduniv with bullhorn-amplified #antisemitic chants flies in the face of President Claudine Gay's description of Harvard as 'a place of civil behavior and civil discourse,' the ADL said in a post on X.

'We join in @HarvardHillel's demand for accountability through Harvard's free speech guidelines and codes of conduct. Harvard has committed that it will not ignore 'anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, acts of harassment or intimidation, or threats of violence.' Those words call for action.' 

Ackman previously threatened to pull his funding from the institution in response to Gay's handling of anti-Semitic incidents on campus, which have soared in the wake of the Hamas attack and Israel's subsequent bombardment campaign of Gaza.

On November 4 he wrote to Gay expressing his concerns, revealing he met with Jewish students who told him they have been spat on, subjected to anti-Semitic taunts and memes and physically assaulted in one instance, which he said was caught on video.

The clashes between Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel supporters have resulted in The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department opening an investigation in to allegations of anti-Semitism at the school.