Exactly one proposition
By 
Whaddya know, a rich asshole who can dish it out but can’t take it:
Business Insider’s parent company is divided over the publication’s recent article about plagiarism allegations made against the wife of businessman Bill Ackman.
Ackman led the effort to oust now-former Harvard president Claudine Gay over plagiarism accusations, amid campus controversies around Israel and Gaza. Last week, Business Insider reported that his wife, Neri Oxman, plagiarized portions of her dissertation.
Semafor has learned that the report has caused serious divisions within the top echelons of Axel Springer, BI’s German owner. Some company leaders have debated whether Ackman’s wife was fair game for reporting, and have been concerned that the report could be construed as antisemitic and anti-Zionist. (Oxman was born and raised in Israel.)
In a statement to Semafor, Axel Springer spokesperson Adib Sisani said that while the facts of BI’s report have not been disputed…
Let’s stop where this discussion should have ended. If the journalism was solid, everyone at Axel Springer should tell Ackman to piss up a rope. It was Ackman’s choice to spend days and days pretending to think that full compliance with citation best practices was an issue of immense importance for prominent academics — sorry that it sucks now that he’s reaping but it’s unquestionably newsworthy.
While we’re here, my very favorite part of the million-word tweet he sent out last night:
From the Bill Ackman tweet: “as we learned in Oppenheimer” pic.twitter.com/lgQIh7rszW— iamsock (@Iamsock) January 7, 2024
Until the release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), nobody knew that nuclear weapons were destructive! Next, you’ll tell me that accusations of plagiarism may in some cases be weaponized for political purposes!
…via Thaddeus_Burnside in comments, the paper that literally has an entire section devoted to the former president of Harvard is suddenly skepitcal of the motives of stories about plaigiarism:
