Al Sharpton takes aim at billionaire Bill Ackman for his war against Harvard’s president and ‘all that the civil rights community has been fighting for’

Sharpton, 69, said in an interview that Gay’s resignation after weeks of intense criticism is a sign of the broader dangers facing diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the US. Her resignation is “a blow to the DEI movement that all of us in the civil rights community have been fighting for,” he said, adding that he sees the fight as “bigger than just her.”

Gay stepped down this week, leaving her brief tenure as Harvard’s first Black president, after furor over both plagiarism allegations and her handling of antisemitism on campus. In an essay in the New York Times on Wednesday, she wrote that she’d made mistakes but that the campaign against her – in which Ackman was a vocal participant – “was about more than one university and one leader.”

By noon on Thursday, more than two dozen protesters, some holding placards, marched in a ring outside the Manhattan office of Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund Ackman founded. Their chants of “No justice, no peace,” and “If we don’t get it, shut it down,” echoed down the block. Ackman was nowhere to be seen, having posted on X that he would be out of the country.

Smith Georges, 67, a New York resident from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, said at the protest that he felt frustrated to see Gay — who is the daughter of Haitian immigrants — reach such a prestigious position only to have it end so swiftly.

“They’re so quick to bring her down,” he said. 

Another attendee, activist Gwen Carr, said she’d met Gay at an event at Harvard in September.

“I feel disappointed that they targeted her,” Carr said of Gay’s exit.

Targeting DEI

Gay’s critics, including Ackman, have…