In the wake of Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard, billionaire investor Bill Ackman posted a 4,000-word essay to his X account railing against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and suggesting that Gay was hired for the job because she had advanced that line of thinking.
Elon Musk quickly co-signed the remarks, declaring that “discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.”
On Wednesday, another billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, sought to refute his peers. “Let me help you out,” he began.
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Cuban then outlined his view on DEI, making the case that the framework is both common sense and in the best interest of businesses.
“I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration. By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified,” he wrote, adding that “DEI-phobic” companies work to his advantage by leaving more capable candidates in the hiring pool.
As for equity, Cuban said, “Treating people equally does not mean treating them the same… Recognize their differences and play to their strengths [wherever] possible. It is not a hard concept. But it is not easy to implement.”
Cuban further argued that “inclusion” is not a nefarious concept but merely a way to make “all employees, no matter who they are or how they see themselves, feel comfortable in their environment and able to do their jobs.”
Companies that approach DEI as a “check list” are likely to implement it poorly, which “ in turn creates resentment,” an avoidable problem, he said.
Other business groups, like McKinsey, have defined DEI using similar language.
Ackman took a markedly different tack in his open letter. He called DEI “a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large.” The movement, he continued, determines a person’s “degree of oppression” on an intersectional pyramid, in which white people, Jews, and Asian people “are deemed oppressors.”
“According to DEI,” he asserted, “capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist.”
Ackman claimed that DEI has been the underlying cause of antisemitism on the Harvard campus, an issue that captured his attention following Hamas’ attack on Israel in early October. Before Israel launched a counterattack—the severity of which has been condemned by many human rights groups—more than 30 Harvard student organizations signed a letter labeling Israel “solely responsible” for the violence.
Ackman also blasted Harvard’s response to the Hamas attacks, singling out Gay, whose congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus was also widely panned. (She was also accused of plagiarizing portions of academic work.)
In her resignation letter this week, Gay wrote that “it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”
Ackman speculated, without evidence, that Gay had been hired in part because of her “leadership in the creation of Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and the penetration of the DEI ideology into the [Harvard] Corporation board.”
“I didn’t say that former President Gay was hired because she was a black woman,” he added—but he argued that candidates who didn’t “meet the DEI criteria” were excluded from the process.
Ackman derided DEI advocates as hostile to criticism; its opponents, he said, are reflexively labeled as racist and often face professional consequences.
The billionaire used his letter to make the case for university presidents who hail from a different background: his own. “A university president requires more business skills than can be gleaned from even the most successful academic career,” he wrote.
But he rebuked billionaire businesswoman Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, as unfit for her job, insisting that she and Gay’s other former supporters should resign.
On Thursday, after Cuban’s initial exchange with Musk, Sen. J.D. Vance attempted to score points on the issue, writing, “Do the Dallas Mavericks reflect the demographics of America as a whole?”
“If you were trying to make a stupid comment, you nailed it,” Cuban replied.
“First, as an organization as a whole, yes we do. More importantly, if you understand the value of DEI, it's not in checklists and quotas, it's in understanding how to best compete as a company. We hire the people who put us in the best position to succeed.”
