Bill Ackman says lifting from Wikipedia is not plagiarism after his wife’s work questioned

Billionaire hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman said taking phrases from Wikipedia “does not strike” him as plagiarism after his wife was accused of lifting the site’s entries almost verbatim in her work.

Mr Ackman has made headlines recently for his vehement opposition to Harvard President Claudine Gay — who eventually stepped down after facing her own plagiarism allegations.

Earlier this week, Business Insider said it found numerous examples of plagiarism in the work of Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor who is married to Mr Ackman. Dr Oxman apologised after the initial claims brought by the publication surfaced.

However, on 5 January, the outlet reported finding 28 additional examples of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation and other writings. Some of these accusations entailed lifting definitions from Wikipedia, the outlet claimed.

Mr Ackman quickly came to her defence. He responded to the most recent allegations against his wife in two lengthy tweets: “Neri has yet to vet yesterday’s plagiarism allegations, but she will get to them when she has time to do so.”

He then questioned whether lifting sentences from Wikipedia was plagiarism after all. The billionaire noted that 15 of the outlet’s 28 alleged discoveries of plagiarism “were definitions of words or terms that Neri may have used from Wikipedia.” To showcase the striking parallels, Business Insider showed side-by-side images of Dr Oxman’s writings and the Wikipedia definitions of terms like, “weaving” or “heat flux.”

“Is this plagiarism?” Mr Ackman asked on X. “Let’s assume that in writing her dissertation Neri used Wikipedia as a dictionary for these terms and it is deemed to be plagiarism, does it any way affect the quality and originality of the research in her dissertation? I think that’s worth an important discussion among the experts.”

He continued, “It does not strike me as plagiarism, nor do I think it takes anything away from her work.

“I am not sure who would even complain that they were not cited properly,” Mr Ackman added.

The hedge fund CEO also criticised the lack of time given to Dr Oxman to evaluate the passages in question and respond, saying the outlet “acted with actual malice and bad faith.” He likened the organisation to the mafia before adding the caveat: “Even the mafia operates with more dignity and respect for family, and I apologize to the mafia for the comparison.”

The Harvard alum also accused the outlet’s reporter of “attacking” his wife despite her being “ totally uninvolved in my advocacy on higher education.”

Mr Ackman’s opposition to Ms Gay’s leadership at Harvard was not reserved for the alleged plagiarism. Instead, he took issue with the university’s response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October and he suggested she was hired in part to fulfil the university’s diversity initiative.

He clarified his stance again in his 6 January tweet: “I thought Claudine Gay was a failed leader without regard to her academic record, and that’s why I thought she should not be president of Harvard.”