Criticism of Harvard’s president is growing. Some see race as a factor.

Not long after Harvard President Claudine Gay testified before Congress about antisemitism, spurring widespread outrage and calls for her resignation, someone sent Monica Clark a social media post.

Clark, who is president of the Harvard Black Alumni Society, opened the message and read the words of Bill Ackman, a fellow alum and billionaire hedge fund manager. Ackman wrote that he had inside information that Harvard chose Gay, who in July became the first Black person and second woman to lead the nearly 400-year-old school, partly because a selection committee would not consider anyone “who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.” It is “not good,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale.”

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