DIDN’T MAKE THE GRADE

Bill Ackman Fails in Bid to Get Loyalists on Harvard Board

The billionaire’s candidates could not get enough signatures from alumni.

Billionaire Bill Ackman successfully pushed out the president of Harvard, but his efforts to get four loyalists on the Ivy League school’s Board of Overseers has failed. The New York Times reports that Ackman’s slate failed to get the minimum number of alumni signatures to appear on the ballot for the board election in April. The 12-member board has the power to veto the school’s selection of presidents, and Harvard is on the hunt for a new one after Claudine Gay resigned under pressure—much of it whipped up by Ackman, who was protesting the university’s handling of antisemitism on campus. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg—who famously dropped out of Harvard—also backed a candidate who didn’t make the cut. Sam Lessin, a venture capitalist and 2005 graduate, claimed he would have won if not for technical issues that left him 337 signatures short. “I easily have the 337 and many many more in my inbox from alums who tried to submit but were blocked!” he wrote on X.