Business Insider says that Neri Oxman, wife of billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management Bill Ackman and "a former MIT professor and celebrity within the world of academia," plagiarized material from "Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing."
Ackman, a vocal critic of university presidents' response to student protests against Israel, pressured Harvard President Claudine Gay to resign over plagiarism accusations. That his wife is now accused of plagiarism by a left-wing organ like Business Insider isn't surprising, and Ackman probably expected it.
Indeed, the billionaire turned the tables and went after Business Insider and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his wife matriculated.
In a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday evening, Ackman resurfaced allegations against Mark Gorenberg, claiming the MIT chairman used the university's donor-advised fund to allocate his contributions to a DEI non-profit organization operated by Gorenberg's wife. In doing so, Ackman claimed Gorenberg put MIT's tax-exempt status "at risk."
Ackman didn't stop there. He threatened to investigate Business Insider reporters.
Ackman targeted Business Insider for publishing the allegations, accusing the outlet of not giving the couple adequate time to "research their claims prior to publication." The billionaire went even further to suggest he would execute a review of all journalists from the media company to search for plagiarism, accusing the author of the story of "trying to destroy other people’s reputations."
"Not only did Ms. Long not contact me. I have never spoken to her in my life," Ackman wrote. "Clearly, she had already written her article prior to contacting Fran, our head of communications at 5:19pm when she told him they would be publishing shortly this evening, which they did around 7:10pm. ... This is the worst form of so-called journalism."
This fellow Gorenberg is a piece of work. He donated funds to a "donor advised fund" that was then funneled into Parity.org, a DEI non-profit where his wife serves as the founder, CEO, and CFO and Gorenberg is the treasurer.
"[Donor advised funds] are only permitted to give to legitimate charities that don't afford a personal benefit to the individual or family of the individual who donated to the DAF," Ackman wrote. "It does not appear that the MIT Distribution Committee did proper due diligence on Parity.org, and/or received adequate disclosure. Alternatively, the MIT DAF made special exceptions for Chairman Gorenberg in donating to Parity.org."
Gotchya.
Business Insider wasn't even trying to be subtle about the article being a hit piece.
Not only did Ms. Long not contact me. I have never spoken to her in my life.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 6, 2024
How can she be paraphrasing something I said if she never spoke to me?
Clearly, she had already written her article prior to contacting Fran, our head of communications at 5:19pm when she told him… https://t.co/sngt9tbncs
Oxman issued a clarification and apology.
“I was forwarded an email this morning from a reporter at Business Insider who noted that there are four paragraphs in my 330-page PhD dissertation,” she wrote in a lengthy X post on Thursday afternoon.
“For each of the four paragraphs in question, I properly credited the original source’s author(s) with references at the end of each of the subject paragraphs, and in the detailed bibliography end pages of the dissertation. In these four paragraphs, however, I did not place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors,” Oxman elaborated before apologizing later in the day.
But Business Insider wasn't finished. On Friday, the publication alleged it had found over a dozen additional examples of plagiarism that had been lifted from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced encyclopedia, which means that anyone could have "edited" entries to make it appear Oxman had plagiarized her dissertation. Did anyone check the timestamp on the edits to see if they were recently added?
Even if the charges are true, how can you claim that President Gay's plagiarism was no big deal and then turn around and make Oxman's plagiarism a federal offense? The dripping hypocrisy from Business Insider is par for the course given its standing as a mouthpiece for left-wing causes.
Plagiarism is wrong anytime anyone does it. What we've seen recently is that plagiarism is far more common in the academy than the academy likes to admit. That says a lot more about the academy than it does about professors accused of plagiarism.
