The billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is suing Business Insider after the magazine claimed that his wife, Neru Oxman, plagiarized a 2010 doctoral thesis.
In her 330-page dissertation at MIT, renowned designer and former professor Oxman was accused of plagiarizing lines and paragraphs from a variety of sources, including Wikipedia, other academics, and technical publications.
The season of Amazon sales is upon us! Now indulge and save! Go here to go there. On January 4 and 5, Business Insider released two pieces detailing Oxman’s plagiarism and drawing a connection between it and the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who was also charged with writing with academic dishonesty.
Ackman, who had been outspoken in his criticism of Gay for how she handled a congressional hearing on antisemitism, said that Business Insider’s coverage of his wife was dishonest and defamatory.
“I mean, clearly, lawsuit”
He said that an editor at the journal who was born in Israel was biased against Oxman and that he was given less than two hours to address the accusations.
In addition, he said that without the support of her loved ones, the stories may have “literally killed” his wife and caused “severe emotional harm.”
He commented on X, “She has experienced severe emotional harm, and it has been extremely difficult for her to get through each day as an introvert.”
Ackman claimed that although his wife admitted that her dissertation had four missing quotation marks and one missing footnote, she denied purposeful plagiarism.
He vowed to sue Axel Springer, the parent firm of Business Insider, and the publication for “false claims and defamation.”
“By complaint, I mean lawsuit, to be clear,” Ackman said on Monday.
In addition, he shared a scene from the film “Gladiator” on X along with the caption, “At My Signal, Unleash Hell,” suggesting that he was prepared to take Business Insider to court.
But Business Insider defended its reporting, claiming that it was factual, well-researched, and newsworthy.
The CEO of the journal, Barbara Peng, said in a statement on Sunday that the stories were completed with editorial independence and had no personal, political, or religious goal.
“There was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story,” Peng said.
“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng added.
