Bill Ackman has spent the past 18 months crusading to combat antisemitism on college campuses across the US. It’s a position that’s gained him influential supporters as well as detractors who’ve accused the billionaire investor of enabling the Trump administration’s attack on universities.

His upcoming May 18 appearance as the headliner at the Center for Jewish History’s next symposium is highlighting those divisions while stoking a debate over free speech and supporting diverse viewpoints that Ackman himself has promoted.

Some 60 scholars have signed a petition calling to cancel the event, titled “The End of an Era? Jews and Elite Universities.” Their objections include his lack of academic credentials.

He’s “a prominent Harvard alumnus and one of the most vocal and visible critics of the rise of campus antisemitism,” Gavriel Rosenfeld, the Center for Jewish History’s president and a professor at Fairfield University, said about the decision to have Ackman speak at the event.

But to some scholars, it’s an affront as the White House assails universities over their treatment of Jewish students to try to exert control over elite colleges. The administration has pulled funding from schools including Harvard and Columbia, threatened their tax-exempt status - a move Ackman has called fair - and is now weighing a steep tax on their endowments.

“I find it deeply disturbing that the center would want to platform someone who is so prominent in the ranks of those who have been enabling the attack on higher education,” said Atina Grossmann, a history professor at New York’s Cooper Union.

A spokesperson for Ackman declined to comment. The investor agreed to speak at the request of Marty Peretz, a former Harvard professor and the chair of the May 18 event whom he considers a mentor, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Peretz, a longtime supporter of the center, said he and CJH are paying for the costs of the conference. The 17 speakers include Deborah Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University who served as the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism from 2022 to 2025; Leon Wieseltier, the former literary editor of the New Republic; and Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel.

Some of the scholars who signed the petition said in interviews the program breaks with the center’s tradition of holding forums featuring almost exclusively academics.

The letter described Ackman’s top billing as “nothing short of contempt for CJH’s scholarly community,” noting Ackman had specifically impugned Derek Penslar, the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies - himself a past member of CJH’s academic council.

After Penslar was chosen by Harvard to co-chair an antisemitism task force, Ackman wrote to his more than 1 million X followers that Harvard “continues on the path of darkness.”

Ackman, who has a net worth of $7.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, successfully campaigned on social media for the ouster of Claudine Gay as Harvard’s president. Lately he’s called for a change atop Harvard Corp., the body that oversees the school.

As with Harvard, Ackman has personal ties to the center. He helped raise $30 million to retire construction debt about 15 years ago, served as a co-chair of the center’s board from 2011 to 2014, and recently provided funding to the Anne Frank exhibition that was just extended.

“It is not, from a scholarly point of view, useful to try to silence a serious person with serious thoughts,” Peretz said. “He takes Jewish history very seriously and there are many different views on different matters.”