CNBC Transcript: Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman Speaks with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Today

WHEN: Today, Monday, November 6, 2023  

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Monday, November 6 to discuss the rising tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/11/06/pershing-square-ceo-bill-ackman-harvard-has-not-been-a-bastion-of-free-speech.html.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Welcome back to "Squawk Box." Last hour, we were talking about the rising tide of antisemitism on college campuses across the country and over the weekend hedge fund manager Bill Ackman sent a letter to the president of Harvard University, his alma mater, calling for her to take steps to reduce antisemitism on campus. Bill was listening in on the conversation we were having with Jay Clayton just earlier and has now called into the Squawk news line. Bill, it's great to have you on the program. I'm curious what your thoughts were as you were listening to that conversation.

BILL ACKMAN: So I thought Jay was spot on in many ways with one exception and you with one exception, which is I don't think this is that complicated. I think the issues are incredibly complicated, the underlying issues, the Israel Palestinian situation, but the issue of free speech on campus is not and here's my sort of perspective on it. One, I'm a huge free speech advocate, okay. And I think universities are important places for free speech to be in place. At the same time, there are laws about free speech, there's certain kinds of free speech that's maybe a certain speech is not protected speech. So for example, if you, you know, incite people to harm others, by your words, okay, that's, you know, that's fighting words. You know, if you look up the definition, you know, the, the the law under the First Amendment, but beyond limitations under the law, universities, you know, the Harvard campus is a private space, it has its own rules. It has its own code of conduct. And Harvard takes action against students that create an unsafe environment for other students. You've seen this all the time. There are many examples of this. And it's usually when someone says a slur for example, against a LGBTQ person or a person of a different skin color, for example, and that kind of speech which is actually permitted speech under the First Amendment okay, it's hateful speech but it's permitted. Universities, most universities, I think the vast majority don't tolerate their students speaking like that on campus, they suspend them, there are administrative procedures depending upon the degree of, you know, if students are show hostility to one another, physically or otherwise. So for example, there was a protest at Harvard and—

SORKIN: That video, it's on video.

ACKMAN: Yes. It's on multiple videos.

SORKIN: And you make the point, you made the point that they should be suspended immediately. And what what what's taking so long?

ACKMAN: Yeah, and the answer is, oh, well, there's a police investigation and therefore we're not going to do anything until you know the investigation is completed. It's absurd. Harvard's never paid that way. Harvard suspends students for drinking too much. Harvard suspends students for, you know, one kid, this is a friend of a friend of the industry, okay, a son a very good friend of his on a lacrosse team drank too much, found themselves asleep in another student's car and because they were of different ethnicities, the assumption was that it was a, you know, it was somehow  a racist act that he was suspended for two months before the investigation was completed. But Harvard took immediate action and I think the issue here is one free speech is critically important. And Harvard, unfortunately has not been a bastion of free speech. There was a survey by an independent organization that looks into these issues on campus and found Harvard was ranked last, okay. They've gotten worse in the last four years but this year, they literally came in last out of 254 schools and now this view is the school is using and the President is talking about how free speech is so important which is why we've done nothing on on students shouting "Free Palestine from the river to the sea," which is a known okay, you know, if people were talking about lynching members of the black community, that would not be permitted speech on campus and we're saying you know, let's throw out LGBTQ people, let's, let's throw them off into the sea. I mean, that just would not be permitted speech on Harvard and I can't imagine it would be permitted speech elsewhere and the fact that it's allowed to continue, okay, and the university does nothing that's when, what started out as legitimate criticism of Israel, there's nothing wrong with being critical of Israel, okay. And you should be able to say whatever you want, which is critical of Israel, it's another thing when you're talking about eliminationist talk, right? Destroying of people an ethnic group, okay? That's genocide.

 

SORKIN: Bill, you spent some time there. You said you spent about seven hours on the campus meeting, meeting with students, just in a very sort of the palpable sense of fear that you that you sensed from those students. And then by the way, did you sense a palpable sense of fear on the other side of this? I mean, I look I don't always say that there's another side to this, but there are obviously folks who have various views on this, on this issue.

ACKMAN: What I would say is, you can't have an effective learning environment when students are literally afraid, afraid to express themselves and who they are, and even in some cases to go to class, right. A student, I did a town hall with a bunch of students and a student said, you know, Bill, I have a tough time going to class when on the student message board someone's writing, you know, antisemitic statements, or putting up antisemitic cartoons and then I see him, you know, as he sits in front of me at my HBS class. It doesn't help my ability to learn, right, and I think the reason why universities have the ability to say in their own environments, you know what, we're going to, we're going to actually have some limits on free speech. We're not going to allow people to say hateful things about Jewish people, about black people, about LGBTQ people, because you know what, it creates a hostile environment that's not conducive to learning. The university could come to that conclusion. A university could also say, you know what, we're going to go very strictly the laws around free speech, we're going to, you know, allow everything up to the edge of free speech, but even there, again, what's not permissible speech what's called fighting words, okay, or when you make statements and you incite people to cause harm to others, and it creates a risk of imminent harm and what's happened, observing the Harvard campus and elsewhere is in fact a risk of imminent harm, right, if someone is, you know—

JOE KERNEN: What's even more frustrating to me is that the hate speech is being defended. The things that you're talking about are being allowed right now. But for years now, the wrong ideas, the wrong ideas, and usually they're conservative ideas and Jay Clayton brought up expressing skepticism about, you know, anthropogenic climate change that it's, you know, going to be disaster. You're not allowed on campus. Condoleezza Rice, we mentioned that I don't know that she considered to be a, a war criminal. I'm not even sure what the pretense was.

BECKY QUICK: Protestors there, it was not.

KERNEN: Fine. Many, many, there are plenty of situations the last five years that you've probably watched where certain ideas were not welcome on liberal or liberal campuses. And you're—

ACKMAN: So you're entirely right. Yes.

KERNEN: Did you ever say anything about that, Bill? Did you ever say anything about that. I mean, I think it's maddening. And now this is allowed that's why the juxtaposition is just unbelievable.

ACKMAN: Joe, Joe. By the way, you're 100% right and this is a great opportunity. Okay, by the way, I shared your frustrations, okay. Did I do anything about it in very public way? I didn't. Okay, and my bad okay, but yes, you know, the whole purpose behind the university system where professors get tenure was actually to protect them so they can put forth controversial ideas. Okay, science, okay is about the continual pursuit of the truth. Okay, and what we believe to be true about science changes and changes over time vary dramatically over centuries. And if you create an environment in a university where you can't challenge things like the climate thesis, okay, that is a very, very dangerous thing. The same thing is true about controversial topics like vaccines. The same thing is true, you know, the universities are supposed to be safe places to have those kinds of conversations. And you're entirely right. What's happened is, tenure has been used as a way for someone to have permanent protection for their job and speech has been, you know, true free speech has been curtailed on many campuses. And you're correct, that conservative voices have been, have been shouted down or not permitted to share their remarks. And that's why the incredible hypocrisy of what's going on now is incredibly evident. And what I'm hoping is, hopefully you saw that in the letter that I wrote I tried to make the point, okay, that this is about free speech and free speech is critically important is critically important on campus. Okay, but an environment where students feel physically threatened, okay, and where racist speech is allowed to be amplified and the perception is that the university or the clear reality is it's permissible. It's defended by the president of the university in the context of free expression when the same university president had been responsible for shutting down speech on campus of other members of the faculty and students. It's, it's shameful, and it's incredibly, incredibly wrong.

QUICK: Hey Bill, can I just ask you, I agree with you on a lot of what you've said the antisemitism that we've seen that is rampant antisemitism. 100%, I think should be barred by these universities. But when you start getting into whether or not it's complicated, I think it is. There's an entire side of the argument who would say that if you say free from the river to the sea that just means that they want to live in a democratic society where they're created equally, they will say free Palestine just means to give them a dual state solution. So that seems a little more complicated than some of the very blatant, obvious, hateful, inciting people to riots. And that's where it looks like it's not quite so—

ACKMAN: Agree to disagree with you. Okay. Free Palestine. I have no objection to it. Okay. You can say free anything is fine. Okay. But the language from the river to the sea, these are Hamas' words. These are the words of terrorists. Okay.

QUICK: It's actually from the Bible before that. The Hamas people did pick it up. The Hamas picked it up later.

ACKMAN: Okay but it was adopted, adopted by Hamas in part—

SORKIN: It was adopted, right. it's part of the Hamas charter. Okay. If you had students, chanting part of the ISIS charter, okay, I haven't read the equivalent of the ISIS charter, okay, and everyone knows precisely what it means. I mean, you can, there are there are code words to speak about other ethnic groups, okay, that are not permitted on campus. Right. There are nicknames, for example, given to other ethnic groups that are entirely not permissible and not just ethnic groups, right, LGBTQ. The complication the complication, right, totally agree with you. First of all, number one, I'm pro Palestine, I'm anti-terrorist. Okay, but the complications, a lot of complications about the history, okay about entitlements, the lands, okay, and there are powerful arguments on both sides and we should be having these conversations on campus. We should be bringing the faculty, the students, all different sides of the issue to have a conversation.

QUICK: And education them. Right.

ACKMAN: A solution. That's what education is. Okay.

SORKIN: Okay, but here's my question, Bill, because we gotta run and I just I just have one other question because it relates to this hypocrisy issue. Maybe ask Joe and Becky the same question. Do you feel more empathy or less empathy for the marginalized groups over the last five years where the freedom of speech has been either I don't know if it's protected or the universities have stepped in? That's actually I think, an important question right now, because what's happening here, well no, there's a there's a question about, there's a lot of people who are looking at this saying, oh, it's so hypocritical because, you know, these other marginalized groups over the last five years, universities have stepped in to protect them. And now they're not protecting them here. Right. And as Bill said, he said, you know, but nobody, the same people who are now saying this today, were in some ways against what was happening before, before it was being too woke. Before it was being too woke. Before it was being snowflake—

QUICK: No, I was never—

SORKIN: Well, I think that that's part of what it was. So I'm curious Bill, how you think about that.

KERNEN: But the woke people have their preferred marginalized people, they they dictate who's marginalized and who's not and whose ideas you have to have. The whole woke thing is just never – go ahead Bill.

ACKMAN: Yeah, so the thing again I had never done, okay. I never read, I'd never read Harvard's DEI statement. I always thought of DEI which for all marginalized groups, okay. My ignorance, okay, but the DEI program at Harvard is limited to specific groups and exploits others. If you're an Asian student is a victim of prejudice at Harvard, you don't contact Harvard's DEI office, okay? They don't, they don't, they don't work for you. Okay. And that is really, really wrong. And by the way, the most marginalized group at Harvard probably in the last five years to Joe's point, is probably someone with a right leaning opinion on an issue. That was a marginalized group.

KERNEN: Well, that's okay though Bill. Those people don't—

ACKMAN: My point is that DEI, okay, it should be that a university, the world should be to protect people who have minority voices, if you will, or a smaller group, okay, and they're at risk if you will of a tyranny of a majority, and that's what DEI should be about. It should be protecting marginalized groups, people who are discriminated against, people who are threatened by the actions of a larger majority. That's what DEI in my mind should be about. That those people are at risk of being taken advantage, of being harmed, of being emotionally harmed or being, you know, and that's what we should, we should as Americans, okay, as citizens, we should protect those minorities, but those minorities shouldn't be a selected favored group, right. They should be—

SORKIN: Bill, you're not going to get a disagreement around this table on that issue. We need to thank you for for dialing in. We very, very much appreciate you having having you on the program especially given the letter you wrote over the weekend and your thoughts, given your time spent at Harvard and we look forward to talking to you again, very, very soon.