Bill Ackman and Mark Zuckerberg Fail to Find Candidates for Harvard Board of Overseers

It’s hard to get into Harvard, even if you’ve done it before.

Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, and Bill Ackman, head of the Pershing Square hedge fund, discovered the same thing in their failed attempt to get dissident candidates onto the Harvard Board of Overseers, one of the university’s two governing bodies.

The candidates — a list of four backed by Mr. Ackman and one candidate backed by Mr. Zuckerberg — said Friday that they had not collected enough petition signatures to appear on the April ballot for the board election.

“We are disappointed but greatly appreciate all the support,” Zoe Bedell, an assistant U.S. attorney who was on Ackman’s list, said in a statement Friday. “We look forward to trying again next year.”

Their failure raised questions about how much support there was for Mr. Ackman’s sustained campaign against Harvard’s leadership in recent months.

Mr. Ackman praised the candidates’ military experience, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s candidate, Sam Lessin, is a venture capitalist and a former employee of Facebook (as Meta was previously known).

But they couldn’t overcome the first hurdle: collecting the 3,238 signatures of Harvard alumni to get their names on the ballot for the April election.

On Friday evening, Mr Lessin posted on social media that he had received 2,901 write-in nominations, 337 short of the required 3,238.

“As far as I know, no write-in candidates were left,” Lessin wrote in a message to supporters posted on X on Friday evening.

He blamed the problem on technical glitches in Harvard’s petition process. “I have easily the 337 and counting in my inbox from alumni who tried to submit but were blocked!”

The candidates campaigned on a platform of protecting free speech, overhauling management, protecting against anti-Semitism and ensuring academic rigor. These issues had boiled over at Harvard in recent months, when Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard president after fighting accusations of plagiarism and tolerating anti-Semitism.

The 30-member Board of Overseers serves primarily as an advisory body to the more powerful Harvard Corporation. But the overseers do have a veto over presidential appointments, a crucial power as Harvard searches for Dr. Gay’s replacement. And their approval is also required for new members of the Corporation, which currently has 12 members and one vacancy.

Only Harvard alumni can serve as trustees and only alumni can vote in annual elections for the board. There are five open seats for six-year terms.

Mr. Ackman complained bitterly that Harvard had made the process opaque and cumbersome when he tried to gather signatures. Alumni had to navigate a somewhat confusing online system, requiring them to register at least 24 hours before the deadline to sign a petition. Mr. Ackman said Harvard appeared to have changed the format a few days before the deadline for signatures.

“If this isn’t election interference, I don’t know what is,” Mr. Ackman said. posted on X before the signatures were counted.

Harvard, Mr. Ackman and Mr. Zuckerberg declined to comment after the results were announced.

Candidates for supervisors are traditionally nominated through Harvard’s alumni association. But candidates put forward through a petition have been more likely to appear on the ballot, particularly those calling for divestment from the fossil fuel industry or apartheid-era South Africa.

There have been notable losers: Barack Obama has secured enough petition signatures in 1991, on a platform of divestment in South Africa, but did not win a seat.

Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are major donors to Harvard, most recently to artificial intelligence research. They went to YouTube to introduce Mr. Lessin, who met Mr. Zuckerberg at Harvard. Dr. Chan, a Harvard graduate, is eligible to vote in the election, but Mr. Zuckerberg, who has withdrawn, is not.

In their video discussion, Mr. Lessin, class of 2005, argued that superintendents could play a more active role. “They have a veto on a lot of important things,” he said, adding, “They haven’t used it much lately.”

Mr. Ackman’s list included Ms. Bedell, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia; Logan Leslie, founder of Northern Rock, an investment firm; Alec Williams, an investment fund manager in Boise, Idaho; and Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

Ms Bedell said the slate emerged from a core of friends with a commitment to service. Mr. Ackman employed one of them—Mr. Williams — and they reached out to him for support, she said.

Even if they had managed to get on the ballot, only two of the petition candidates could have won a seat. Harvard has set a limit of six supervisors nominated by petition at any one time, and four already serve on the board. Voting in the elections is scheduled to begin on April 1 and last until mid-May.

Another petition hopeful, Harvey Silverglate, the co-founder of FIRE, a free speech group, received 457 signatures in his third attempt since 2009 to get on the ballot.

Mr. Silverglate said that without access to a master list of Harvard alumni, it was very difficult to tell people about his candidacy. “This was an insider’s game,” he said. He plans to run again next year.