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For a long time, people (including me) have been calling for major changes in higher education. Now someone is doing something about it. Hedge-fund tycoon Bill Ackman is waging war to make universities accountable. Ackman started his campaign by demanding the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth after the trio’s shambolic performance before Congress on antisemitic harassment on their campuses. Magill and Gay are now gone, and Kornbluth is worried. Penn’s board of trustees pushed Magill out pretty quickly. Gay, being a diversity hire, was harder...

The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza on Harvard's campus. An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017. Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted...

Billionaire Harvard donor Bill Ackman is calling for the resignation and replacement of the school's board, which he says is just as much to blame for its problems as ousted president Claudine Gay.Gay resigned yesterday, finally bowing to calls to stand down a month after her calamitous congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and amid growing accusations of academic plagiarism throughout her scholar career...Unsatisfied with Gay's resignation, he says the school's leadership is so deeply flawed that it requires a total overhaul.'The Corporation Board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure which enabled them to obtain...

Infamous former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli and Howard Schiller, the interim chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Valeant, just faced Congress. Legislators on Thursday wanted them to answer for dramatic drug-price increases that affect the lives of Americans. Shkreli caught national attention when his company purchased a lifesaving drug called Daraprim and then raised the price by over 5,000%. Wall Street was closely watching Schiller; Valeant's stock was a darling until accusations of malfeasance from a short seller and government scrutiny over pricing chopped off a quarter of its stock price last year. At the hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland)...

"News that Turing, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and other drugmakers have bought rights to old, cheap medicines that are the only treatment for serious diseases and then hiked prices severalfold has angered patients. It's triggered government investigations, politicians' proposals to fight "price gouging," heavy media scrutiny and a big slump in biotech stock prices." "Turing's Shkreli, under fire from all sides, said late last month that he would lower the price of Daraprim, but hasn't so far. A Turing spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday but recently noted the company is capping patient copayments at $10."

Seventeen years after it was withdrawn from U.S. markets, a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana is going back on sale as a prescription treatment for the vomiting and nausea that often accompany chemotherapy, the drug's manufacturer said Tuesday. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International hopes to begin selling Cesamet in the next two to three weeks, company president Wes Wheeler said. The Costa Mesa, California, company received Food and Drug Administration approval Monday to resume sales of the drug, which it bought from Eli Lilly and Co. in 2004. Valeant currently sells the drug, also called nabilone, in Canada. Lilly...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) said on Sunday it had halted sales of one of its products in Israel amid an investigation by Israel's Health Ministry over complaints from customers that it caused liver problems. Yona Fichman, general manager of Herbalife Israel, said the company was cooperating with the ministry even though there had yet to be a link between the product and what he called abnormal liver test results. A health ministry spokeswoman said eight people reported liver problems over a year and a half, five of whom had consumed Herbalife's Sesame Herb product. She noted that there...

Here come the hyper-partisan hounds. A new nonprofit called American Oversight launched this week to combat President Trump's "culture of impunity." The outfit declared itself "nonpartisan" and claims its crusaders will fight for a "transparent and ethical government." But like Waylon Jennings once crooned, "Baby, that dog won't hunt." These Democrat operatives aren't interested in accountability. Their mission is to attack, obstruct and destroy their political opponents at all costs. Executive Director and Obama donor Austin Evers is certainly familiar with the "culture of impunity." He worked as a lawyer at Williams and Connolly -- the firm representing Hillary Clinton...

Shares of Herbalife Ltd. suffered their biggest loss in more than a year Friday following a report that criminal authorities are investigating the Los Angeles nutritional products company. The FBI has launched a criminal investigation of Herbalife and its web of independent distributors, a federal law enforcement source told The Times. A federal law enforcement official in New York confirmed Friday that the FBI had opened an inquiry into Herbalife but did not know first-hand the extent of the investigation. “I can’t give any guidance on where it’s headed,” the official said. …

Is this George Soros and Carl Icahn-backed firm running a "pyramid scheme"? 13 March 2014 | By Sophie Hobson George Soros and Carl Icahn both hold stakes in it, but controversial US firm Herbalife has come under consistent fire from rival investor William Ackman over its allegedly dubious operations. Now it’s being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over claims it might be running a “pyramid scheme”. The key accusation against Herbalife, which makes weight loss and nutritional supplements and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is that it makes most of its money from signing...

Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano, who is awaiting a federal trial on wiretapping and racketeering charges, has been sued by executors for the estate of the late Herbalife International founder Mark Hughes. The federal lawsuit claims that Pellicano wiretapped the executive on behalf of his former wife, Suzan Hughes, while the couple was going through a divorce. The complaint alleges that Suzan Hughes used information from Pellicano's alleged wiretaps to negotiate a "highly advantageous" divorce settlement in march 1998. Hughes, who built Herbalife into a billion-dollar nutritional supplement business, died in 2000 from a drug and alcohol overdose. Besides...

Bill Ackman has claimed that Harvard president Claudine Gay was only appointed because she fitted the DEI office's criteria, after her shameful refusal to denounce campus protests calling for a Jewish genocide. The 57-year-old billionaire hedge funder has been heavily involved in the debate after expressing his views about Gay clearly on social media and calling for her resignation.

Dear President Gay,I am writing this letter to you regretfully. Never did I think I would have to write a letter to the president of my alma mater about the impact of her actions and inactions on the health and safety of its student body in order to help catalyze necessary change. For the past four weeks since the horrors of October 7th, I have been in dialogue with members of the corporation board, other alumni, as well as students and faculty sharing and comparing our concerns about the growing number of antisemitic incidents on campus, as we wait for...

November 4, 2023 Dear President Gay, I am writing this letter to you regretfully. Never did I think I would have to write a letter to the president of my alma mater about the impact of her actions and inactions on the health and safety of its student body in order to help catalyze necessary change. For the past four weeks since the horrors of October 7th, I have been in dialogue with members of the corporation board, other alumni, as well as students and faculty sharing and comparing our concerns about the growing number of antisemitic incidents on campus,...

Bill Ackman has doubled down on his push to have companies refuse employment opportunities to the Harvard students who signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ violent attack that killed more than 1,200 people over the weekend. The hedge fund billionaire who founded Pershing Square Capital Management held his ground after a Harvard law student slammed him for “harassment” in response to a social media post on X in which he demanded a list of the signatories of the controversial letter. “If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist...

Over a dozen business executives are joining the call to blacklist the Harvard students who put out a statement that blamed Israel for the Hamas attack, while the group whined about being persecuted in the aftermath. CEOs from EasyHealth, Belong, FabFitFun, Inspired, DoveHill and many more joined billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in the charge of outing the members of 31 student organizations who issued the statement on Sunday. Ackman said, 'One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other...

At least a dozen business executives have endorsed Bill Ackman’s call to deny hiring members of student groups at Harvard who signed on to a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ deadly attack on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people, including at least 22 Americans. Jonathan Newman, the CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, was among a group of business honchos who seconded Ackman in urging that the signatories of the letter circulated by the a coalition of 34 Harvard student groups who “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” “I would like to know so I know...

Bill Ackman wants Harvard University to release a list of the members of the dozens of student groups who signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ violent assault over the weekend so as to make sure they don’t work on Wall Street. “I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members,”

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says the US government should consider a "highly dilutive" bailout of Silicon Valley Bank amid jitters about its financial position. The bank's failure "could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash," Ackman said in a series of tweets on Thursday. "If private capital can't provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov't preferred bailout should be considered," he said.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says the US government should consider a "highly dilutive" bailout of Silicon Valley Bank amid jitters about its financial position. The bank's failure "could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash," Ackman said in a series of tweets on Thursday. "If private capital can't provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov't preferred bailout should be considered," he said.