You were a lifelong Democrat, gave to Democrats just because...
It wasn't a lifelong... what you're getting wrong. So I was always a centrist. I didn't align with a party.
What was the moment, if you can go back, that you were like, 'This has to change and I'm going to speak up'? Was there a specific issue that just changed your mind, or was it this slow-moving ideology over time?
I think it was more of a slow-moving and then rapidly accelerating perspective. My principal motivation in life was always independence. I have wonderful parents, kind of strict, but I never wanted to be controlled by my parents, my teachers, my boss. I wanted to be independent. And on the positive side, you know, financial resources provides a great degree of independence. Independence to speak, you know, independence to write a 4,000-word post on Twitter about something important.
You're married to Neri Oxman, who is incredibly accomplished in her own right. What's the secret to making a marriage work when both people have such demanding careers?
I'm crazy in love with this woman, and we prioritize each other.
You've become one of the most influential voices on X. What's your secret to shaping the national conversation?
How long does it take you to draft one of your long bangers?
Um, it depends. I get into this sort of flow. Um, but there have been nights where I say good night to my wife and I go to bed at two.
Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We're in Washington, D.C. today with Bill Ackman. Thanks for doing this.
You were a longtime donor to Democrats until President Trump came around. You still identify as a centrist. How do you explain your political evolution?
The answer is I live in New York. I didn't take politics that seriously. I always had sort of centrist views, and the only people who showed up at my office were Democrats, and I supported the ones I liked as people. But I didn't really think about politics that much.
Did you lose any of your friends when you publicly were supportive of President Trump?
So, one of my closest friends, perhaps my closest friend, for a little over a year distanced himself. Yeah. Which was disappointing.
What was the moment in time, if you can go back, that you were a lifelong Democrat, gave to Democrats? Just because that's...
It wasn't a lifelong... This is what you're getting wrong. So, I was always a centrist. I didn't align with a party.
But in New York City, if you want to vote in an election...
Like where it's going to matter, like the primary.
You have to register. So, I registered for... I was an independent, and then there was an important election. I registered as a Democrat to vote for whomever. I don't remember who. And then I, you know, hadn't checked my registration in years, kind of thing. That's sort of where I was politically.
What was the moment, if you can go back, that you were like, 'This has to change and I'm going to speak up'? Was there a specific issue that just changed your mind, or was it this slow-moving ideology over time?
I think it was more of a slow-moving and then rapidly accelerating perspective.
Do you think that Democrats have lost their ability to connect with successful entrepreneurs and business leaders?
I think the Democratic Party is in the worst place it's ever been in the 250-year history of the country. I think it's become like this crazy, radicalized, you know, anti-American thing. I think it's... and by the way, I think there's some very high-quality Democrat, you know, senators, and I'm sure some congressmen, but the party itself, I think, is in a very bad place. And I think the problem with people who've chosen to be a politician for a career, you either have to get with the party in order to continue, or you get primaried. Um, you know, actually, you know, Senator Schumer, I had a good relationship with him over the years, thought he was a good man, but in recent years I felt he's just trying to keep his job. And you know, that's the really low point for politicians when they'll compromise on their values and they'll support, you know, a quasi-terrorist perhaps running for Senate in Michigan because they have to for the party. Stuff like that to me is... or terrorist supporter is not a... that's... I find that pretty deeply concerning.
Do you think the establishment has become too afraid of its progressive wing?
Of course. By the way, that's where the energy of the party is. You know, energy being young people, people... I mean, social media in a way, because of the, you know, the ability of young people to engage on social media and the later generations not knowing how to do so, it kind of energizes the youth in a way that makes them incredibly important. So Mamdani's election, successful win in New York, was driven by a young, white, educated, social media-active cohort.
Sure. But if you look at the flip side of it, you look at Spencer Pratt in LA, similar type energy, and it didn't land.
Didn't land. Is there anyone on the left today who could convince you to vote Democrat again?
You know, I don't know who that... like, who the candidate, who the party will put up for the candidate. Look, I've had a longstanding personal relationship with Cory Booker. Love the guy. He's a wonderful human being. Um, he's disappointed me occasionally, you know, politically, but there's some, you know, very... I don't actually choose my friends on the basis of their political party. I probably have as many, if not more, friends who are Democrats than Republicans. Um, but, um, you know, I haven't seen a good presidential candidate. Certainly none of the names, you know, Pritzker, Newsom, make your list of candidates. I think these are, you know, disasters.
You've challenged the influence of DEI in higher education. Do you believe that corporate America has actually abandoned DEI?
They have completely rethought it. Yeah.
Have they just rebranded it though?
No. I think most companies have realized that they were probably operating in violation of the law, and I do think diverse corporate environments are kind of good for America, but people should not... you shouldn't be selecting people on the basis of skin color for a role.
Do you think we're done with pride flags on everyone's logo in the month of June?
There'll be fewer of them. I think...
You are and were for a very long time a large donor to Harvard. President Trump has made this a centerpiece of his administration, is ridding wokeness out of schools. What do you think about President Trump's efforts? Do you think Harvard is a place that can eradicate some of the origination of this woke thought? And what is the future of your Harvard giving?
So, it's actually working. And I was just at a wedding this weekend with a friend of mine who was a classmate, who was a professor at Harvard. He said, 'Bill, Harvard's changed dramatically in the last few years. The student body's changed significantly. We've got... it's gone back to being a meritocracy.' And people are actually encouraged to say what they think. And I even have conservative students who are, you know, unafraid, and that was not the case a few years ago. So he says it's better. What's changed specifically, though, is if it's not the faculty... the faculty, he said, has not changed, and of course tenure makes that a more difficult proposition, but the student body is changing both in, I would say, the political composition and the willingness of people. I mean, there was an enormous... there wasn't censorship at Harvard, there was self-censorship. The consequences for not being part of the prevailing point of view were severe to both faculty and to students. And now it's actually... and I credit the president, Alan Garber, for creating an environment that is more accepting of, more encouraging of speech that is not, let's say, the... you know, but more open-mindedness to different views.
So are you going to continue to give to Harvard in the future?
I think Harvard's okay. I'm not worried about Harvard's. I have other philanthropic things I'm focused on. But...
If you go back and look at what happened with October 7th and then its downstream influences specifically on universities, we've talked about Harvard. What was your immediate reaction when you saw these university presidents struggle to answer the call about when people on campuses were calling for the genocide of Jews, raising Hamas flags, whether that be on Harvard, Cornell, Columbia?
So October 7th, I think, didn't change anything about universities. It was this sort of reveal. It's a bit like the tide kind of rolled out and then you could actually see what was going on on campuses. The reason why the universities were afraid of pushing back is because this had become, you know, the faculty and the student bodies and what was being taught at university had changed very dramatically. I was just unaware of it. Um, I, you know, what people talk about, the rot, if you will, was not visible until, in my... for me, until October 7th. And you know, pretty straightforward. You know, there were some universities who managed very well, some of the elite universities, Dartmouth being one of them, very quickly opened a dialogue, you know, encouraged speech on the issue, I think managed through it well. And there were, you know, Harvard, MIT, others, um, you know, no principles, no... um, they, you know, had this been black students, you know, or an anti-black movement as opposed to an anti-Jewish movement, you could... it would not have... there wouldn't be two seconds of tolerance.
Do you think elite universities are more concerned with political ideology than academic excellence?
They were, and now they're realizing that that was a mistake.
But I mean, you mentioned the student body was changing over in terms of what's happening with Harvard, but yet, you know, you're not really seeing the output...
coursework or syllabus. What you're seeing is Vanderbilt ascending because Daniel Diermeier has kind of remade the university in a way that's, you know, kind of Western values and free speech and academic excellence, and that's attracted the best students, and that's elevated Vanderbilt. You know, a university is the quality of...
70-80% of its quality is student body, and 20-30% is probably the faculty. And the student body can change much more quickly than the university can. But there are, you know, success stories like Vanderbilt. You know, people now are ranking, you know, a Duke, a Vanderbilt, you know, ahead of a Harvard. You know, many of the top students, and then again, many of the best students don't even go, right.
Do you think... do you still think a degree is worth it?
I think you have to think very seriously about whether it... you know, not clear to me if my child at age seven, 11 years from now, whether she'll go to a conventional university. I don't think it's... 20 years ago it was the obvious thing to do. Today, if you actually have to write the check yourself, you know, if you don't have the benefit of your parents paying, right, is it an economically sensible decision? Is it... you know, I'm not sure.
Do you think you'd ever thought you would say that as like one of Harvard's most famous alumni that you'd be sitting here saying, 'I don't know if my child's going to go to a conventional university'?
The world's changing very rapidly. I mean, AI is changing... should be changing education very rapidly.
With the rise of AI data centers and the need for blue-collar workers, electricians, tradesmen, we are seeing this increase in everyone saying that we need to send kids to these trade schools and apprenticeships and get them out of elite universities and into schools that can teach a skill. But yet parents across the country still dream of sending their kids to these Ivy League schools. Is that a mindset shift we need to make in the United States in order to fill jobs?
Well, I think that, you know, the unfortunate thing is there are a lot of 18-year-old kids who are told, you know, 'Sign here to go to whatever'... doesn't even have to be an elite university. And they're signing up for graduating with, you know, could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. It costs $400,000 to go to Harvard now, basically, for four years, which is insane. And I think the calculus on the investment versus the return on the investment is not being considered thoughtfully by many students. Now, you know, interestingly, perhaps the most elite people today go to Stanford with the intent to drop out, right? If you hang out in Silicon Valley, which I don't do very often, but I was there more recently and I've met like a bunch of startup entrepreneurs. Literally the pitch is, you know, 'I graduated... no, I didn't, I dropped out from Stanford, you know, freshman year to launch XYZ company.' So I think the old model of universities needs to be completely rethought. And then yes, there are some very attractive, you know, the high return on investment education you can get, the examples you're giving, electrician, plumber, etc., that will lead to high-paying jobs. So, you know, is an education simply to get a job? I would argue it should be more than that. But you know, today you can learn pretty much everything from your AI and from a free AI. So it has to be much more than... has to either somehow get you a really great job or position you well in life for it to be worthy of the investment.
Half of college grads are working jobs that don't require a degree, yet they're drowning in student debt. How do we fix a system that's holding an entire generation back?
So I do feel like one of the biggest... you know, if you think about the kind of disclosure that is provided when you sign a mortgage application or a credit card, you know, there's lots of required kind of federal disclosure to make sure that the person signing knows what they're stepping into, or the bank wants information. I don't think that the 18-year-old student, maybe even 17-year-old student signing on for, you know, student debt was provided with the same degree of disclosure, really understood what they were stepping into. The fact that... I think most people don't even know this, but student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Right? So you can borrow a bunch of money to buy a car, a credit card, a home, find yourself underwater, and you can reset your life by filing for personal bankruptcy, which is no fun. And it's bad obviously for your credit record, and people only do it as a last resort, but you can't discharge your student loans. So there... and you can't, you know, the mortgages you can refinance as rates go down. Student loans generally you're unable to do that. So there are many elements of student loans where people stepped into an obligation I don't think they completely understood, and they've been burdened with it. So I think we need to... now, all that being said, I don't think we should just wholesale erase obligations. I wrote a pretty long tweet on the topic. I think there are things we can do for people who've borrowed student loans that would treat them fairly, that would ease the burden, including, by the way, if you're 40 and you're still drowning in student debt and you're effectively insolvent, you should be able to discharge these obligations. The reason why they were non-dischargeable is they didn't want people going to college and then when they're 23 years old filing for bankruptcy and wiping them out. But if you're... by the time... if you're 40, you're pretty established in life, you still can't get out from under your student loans and you're drowning, a bankruptcy court should allow you to manage those loans like any other debt.
You've become one of the most influential voices on X. What's your secret to shaping the national conversation?
How long does it take you to draft one of your long bangers?
Um, it depends. I get into this sort of flow. Um, but there have been nights where I say good night to my wife and I go to bed at two, and you can tell by the time the tweet hits... I hit post. Yeah.
But how do you decide? You know, you're very notorious...
I think you were the one...
My Halloween costume. Did you see my Halloween costume?
Yes.
You were the one who set the tone of why we needed more than 280 characters to write a tweet.
One, why are you choosing that medium? And two, is it just something that inspires you to have a more wholesome conversation? The one that comes out at me is what's happened in your family office.
Because it starts a national conversation about, you know, someone not working hard at their position, and other people are relating to that, but oftentimes people aren't scared to type something that is so deeply personal or that they would get negative feedback on.
Yeah, I guess I'm unafraid of negative feedback. And I think the important thing... I think the, you know, the country, you know, whatever, doesn't move forward if people aren't... there's certain things that need to be said that aren't said, remain unsaid, and they remain unsaid because of fear, because of fear of blowback, fear of, you know, it could hurt my employment, you know, I could get fired. And I guess I'm not afraid of blowback, and I'm not afraid of losing my job. So I'm well positioned, if you will, to, if you, you know, take the risk of speaking the truth. And also the positive feedback I get from people who say, 'Bill, you know, thank God that you were willing to say this. It needed to be said, you know, thank you for having the courage.' It's nice, you know, but I do it because I think it's the right thing to do.
How long did it take you to become unafraid of negative feedback? Because I've met a lot of people who have probably a similar network to yours who still read their Google News and their news alerts and are afraid of any bit of negative criticism. How did you get to the point where you don't care?
You know, I care enormously about my reputation. But I, you know, if someone had something negative to say about me that was true, it would bother me, right? But if someone just has a different point of view or, you know, makes some ad hominem, you know, it doesn't affect me at all. Thick skin.
People know you as a billionaire investor and outspoken political commentator. But what are you like at home?
Loving, both with my daughter, my wife.
What's your daily routine at home?
Wake up around 6:45. Have breakfast with my seven-year-old daughter. Neri's usually hopefully sleeping in a little bit. She needs a little extra sleep. We have different sleep cycles. And then off to work, but I usually start by playing tennis in the morning. So I play tennis for like an hour, hour and a half, which is a great way to start the day, going to the office.
You have four children. How has your approach to fatherhood evolved over the years?
Um, you learn from your mistakes, I guess. You know, I thank my parents for everything they did right and everything they did wrong because you also learn from your parents' mistakes. So I'm not trying to be perfect. But yeah, I don't know. I think, um, you know, when my first... I have three kids with my first wife, and it was a time in my life where, you know, building a company, super intensely involved. And I think my biggest challenge was, you know, while I was... I was really good about being home, I would say my brain was often still processing stuff that happened during the course of the day. And I, you know, I made a real effort to be a lot more present. Um, you know, I can be a lot more present because I'm a little less... you know, I'm not building something... actually, I'm now building something from scratch, but, you know, my company is in a place where I'm... you know, I have an organization where I can... I don't have to be as lost in what I'm doing every day.
What's the biggest difference in how you raised your kids the first time versus having a second chance at it? Is it just being home and being more present?
I was home as much before. I think I'm more present now. And also just having one child, you know, if you have four or if you have three, you know, it's like one-on-one versus the zone defense, right? Oh, yeah. It's a different ball game.
It's a different ball game.
I said this now. I was talking to my sister-in-law yesterday. She has two kids and she was telling me how busy her life is, and I was like, respectfully, I don't really want to hear how busy it is with two kids. I have four kids who, like, at any one moment, each person needs something, and they're all so little that, like, only you can fix each person's thing at that exact moment in time.
But you have to teach them independence to say no, you figured that out.
Well, I had a child... good example is last night, we're doing bath time. I have a baby who's crying who wants to be fed. I have one son who's refusing to get naked on his own to get in the bath. I have one son who's in the hallway closet looking for, like, spray soap for the bathtub, and my daughter slips on the bathroom floor and, like, hits her arm down. Like, you can just hear the, like, crash.
Right? Typical night. No big deal.
Each person needed something and I had two hands.
Yeah, it was a doozy.
You're married...
But by the way, you'll never...
regret these moments because you'll treasure them decades from now.
You know, it's funny you say that because, like, I look now, like, you know, your iPhone does these, like, incredible memories, and I'm like, where did my, like, two-year-old daughter go? Like, I miss her. Like, the one now in front of me is great, but, like, what happened to, like, the squishy baby version of her?
And it's like I was there for all of it.
Woof. This moment in time, I'm not sleeping. So, you're married to Neri Oxman, who is incredibly accomplished in her own right. What's the secret to making a marriage work when both people have such demanding careers?
I'm crazy in love with this woman, and we prioritize each other.
We met... so my ex-wife and I, at the time we were splitting, we sent an email, you know, the kind of the Gwyneth Paltrow-type email that she invented, to our friends saying, you know, we're splitting amicably. And that, I think, later that day or the following day, I got a call from my 78-year-old Harvard professor, and he's like, 'Bill, I have the most amazing woman for you.' And he described this woman and said her name was Neri Oxman. And then he said, 'I'd like to invite you to a dinner party. It's in a couple weeks.' I said, 'That's great.' He said, 'Just one caveat. Her boyfriend is going to be there.' And I said, 'You know what, Marty?' Now, Marty's wonderful. He's gay. Nothing, you know, but I didn't know how good he was at selecting women. So, you know, nothing... gay men can have very good views on women, but he was older and I wasn't sure. And also, she had a boyfriend. So I'm like, 'Hm, you know what, Marty, why don't we wait? Why don't we wait till she's no longer going with the guy.' So lo and behold, we waited. And then about six months later, I got a call, a text from a friend saying, 'Bill, I just met the most incredible woman,' and described her exactly as Marty had. And I said, 'That description sounds familiar. I think Marty wanted to introduce me to someone.' 'Well, what's her name?' 'Neri Oxman.'
Yeah. So she had met her for the first time. Marty's known me forever. He knew Neri for a decade. So Marty did have actually very good taste.
So what was the first date? What was the pickup?
First date we met in Cambridge. She was at MIT. We went to the restaurant, Cafe Arts and Science.
Well, you've seen this, like, I'm chronically online, so I'm going to apologize when I say this, but there was, like, um, I forgot who put it out. They were like, your first move for a woman needs to be, you need to go buy her flowers, meet her at a yoga studio and take her to dinner. And I'm like, that's no way.
We started the conversation and we talked for three months before we went on a first date, which I think is an amazing way to meet someone. I was completely in love with her before I met her.
That's like what courting used to be.
And we started out mobile telephone, and then I convinced her. I said, 'Let's go to FaceTime.' And she wouldn't do that. So I said, 'How about FaceTime audio?' So, which is, you know, higher clarity. Went to FaceTime audio, and then, you know, then I met her, first date. I could look up a picture of her, but it was great. She was actually... we were both sort of still, like, dating. But my French girlfriend said, 'Oh, let's not break up. You can see someone else.' I'm like, 'I don't know how to see someone else.' But I figured I can call someone else. So I called her and we started a conversation. We were just friends. We talked. It was great.
