What does Nelson Peltz have to do to get some respect?

On more than one occasion, Mr. Peltz, who is Jewish, has confronted what he perceived as at least a hint of anti-Semitism. He recalled that his arrival in London in the 1980s was greeted with a tabloid profile headlined “The Wild and Rocking World of Nelson Peltz.” The first sentence, he said, called him a “Jewish boy from Brooklyn,” and the British business community closed ranks against him.

Mr. Peltz, long a fierce critic of anti-Semitism, said he stepped down from his role as chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in December because after four decades in the role, it was time for a change. But The Wall Street Journal reports this which he left after the center called for a boycott of Ben & Jerry’s. The center had deemed the company chairman’s posts as pro-Palestinian after the Hamas attack on Israel. Mr. Peltz is a board member of Unilever, the owner of Ben & Jerry’s.

His fellow billionaire Henry Kravis, the buyout pioneer, is one of the few Jewish members of Palm Beach’s old-money Everglades Club, but not Mr. Peltz. Mr. Peltz said he had “refused to set foot in the club” until there was a Jewish member, and that now that there is, he has had lunch there several times. (Mr. Peltz belongs to the Palm Beach Country Club, which has long housed members excluded from the more restrictive Palm Beach clubs.)

Mr. Peltz’s reputation as a corporate troublemaker also cost him his long relationship with his Manhattan law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. In 2019, the company cut ties with him, even though he had been one of its biggest customers for decades. Paul Weiss handled his estate planning and other matters; a partner of Paul Weiss left the firm to become its general counsel. But after Paul Weiss expanded his elite corporate practice in recent years, the firm told him it could no longer represent activist investors, including him.

Mr. Peltz responded that he was not an activist, but a “constructivist” – someone who worked with management, not against it. He had never orchestrated a hostile takeover, he said, or even fired a CEO. Paul Weiss was not convinced. “They dropped me like that,” Mr. Peltz said. “I was probably their oldest living client.”