Bill Ackman says it's not harassment to ask for the pro-Hamas Harvard students to be named — it's a CEO's due diligence

• Bill Ackman is tripling down on his stance that Harvard should name its pro-Hamas students.
• His reason: CEOs need to know who these students are to do their due diligence on potential hires.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says it's not harassment to ask for pro-Hamas Harvard students to be named — it's due diligence.

Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square, expressed the opinion in a lengthy post on X — formerly known as Twitter — on Wednesday. In the post, he defended the call he made on Tuesday for Harvard to release the names of all the students involved in writing a contentious letter released on Sunday that blamed Israel for Hamas' violent attacks.

The crux of the argument he made on Wednesday is that no business leader should hire a person whose moral character they question.

"If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims? I don't think so," Ackman wrote. "Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims? I don't think so."

"It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment," Ackman added.

He wrote that he thinks company leaders are obligated to fully understand who they're hiring on behalf of their other employees, clients, and customers.

Ackman also gave some advice to the students involved in the matter, who he still thinks should be named and not allowed to "hide behind" the Harvard brand.

"If an organization of which you are a member puts out a public statement you disagree with, you have a few choices," he wrote. "You can: Stay silent and have the entire world conclude that you stand by the statement. Convince the other members of the group to withdraw or otherwise modify the statement so that it can reflect the views of all members. Or you can resign in protest."

Some members of the Harvard student groups have resigned from their positions in the organizations and distanced themselves from the statement. Others say their organizations signed the anti-Israel letter without their knowledge and have asked for any "harassment" to stop.

Ackman was separately criticized by Harvard economics professor Jason Furman for his stance that the students should be named.

"Publishing lists of students and personal information under the headings 'terrorist,' 'genocidal murderer' and 'antisemite' is just wrong in any circumstance, and especially when many of the people named have nothing to do with the statement," Furman, an Obama-era economic advisor, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.

"I admire @BillAckman, including for his efforts to exonerate the innocent," Furman added in a subsequent X post on Wednesday. "We may not agree on the definition of guilt here or the appropriate sentence. But I would hope that he & others would at least take more care in condemning people that even he would consider innocent."

Representatives for Ackman at Pershing Square did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.