Bill Ackman provides a lesson in activist investing

As with every skirmish in America’s culture wars, how you view the ousting of Harvard University’s president has much to do with where you are sitting. Claudine Gay resigned on January 2nd. Progressives see her as a competent administrator who, as Harvard’s first black president, was subjected to a smear campaign. Conservatives, meanwhile, spy a plagiarist who failed to quash antisemitism on campus. Naturally, your columnist—perched at a Bloomberg terminal—views the episode in its true light: as a blood-on-the-carpet coup by an experienced activist investor, disposing of an errant chief executive.

The investor in question is Bill Ackman, one of Wall Street’s more outspoken hedge-fund bosses. He is also one of Harvard’s more generous donors, having given it $50m. And he has spent recent months on the warpath, berating the university for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic attacks.