On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote: “DEI is simply one other phrase for racism. Disgrace on anybody who makes use of it.”

That was in assist of a long post by hedge fund billionaire Invoice Ackman on the reasons he pressured Harvard president Claudine Homosexual to resign, as she announced she would earlier this week. Ackman, CEO of Pershing Sq. Capital Administration, is a Harvard alum and distinguished donor to the college. 

Homosexual obtained intense criticism final month for her solutions to lawmakers over anti-Semitism on campus following the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israel. Particularly, she did not condemn requires genocide in opposition to Jews as a violation of college coverage. That was adopted by allegations by conservative activists that she had dedicated plagiarism in her educational work, and options that she had been unqualified for the position of president, which she assumed final July, within the first place.

“It was a thinly veiled train in race & gender once they chosen Claudine Homosexual,” entrepreneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Harvard alum, posted to X on Tuesday. “Right here’s a radical thought for the long run: choose management based mostly on *benefit.*”

When an X person responded to Musk by questioning whether or not DEI qualifies as racism, Musk countered: “Discrimination on the idea of race, which DEI does, is actually the definition of racism.” 

At this level, one other billionaire weighed in: Mark Cuban, the Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks proprietor (final month he sold his majority stake within the NBA workforce to households linked to Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas on line casino magnate). 

“Let me provide help to out and provide you with my ideas on DEI,” he responded to Musk. 

“Good companies look the place others don’t, to search out the workers that may put your online business in the absolute best place to succeed,” he continued. “It’s possible you’ll not agree, however I take it as a provided that there are folks of varied races, ethnicities, orientation, and so on., which might be frequently excluded from hiring consideration. By extending our hiring search to incorporate them, we will discover folks which might be extra certified. The lack of DEI-phobic corporations is my achieve.”

Ackman responded to Cuban, writing: 

“That’s precisely what I believed till I did the work. I encourage you to do the identical and revert. DEI is just not about range, fairness, or inclusion. Belief me. I fell for a similar lure you probably did.”

Musk replied to Ackman with “Yup.” 

Musk, who owns X, has been a frequent critic of DEI in current weeks. In mid-December, he wrote: “‘Range, Fairness and Inclusion’ are propaganda phrases for racism, sexism and different -isms. That is simply as morally unsuitable as every other racism and sexism. Altering the goal class doesn’t make it proper!”

(The U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee filed a lawsuit in opposition to Tesla in September alleging it did not probe complaints of racist conduct and has fired or retaliated in opposition to workers who reported harassment. In different such circumstances, Tesla has mentioned that it doesn’t tolerate discrimination and takes such complaints severely.)

Ackman, in an analogous vein, wrote on Wednesday: “DEI is racist as a result of reverse racism is racism, even whether it is in opposition to white folks (and it’s outstanding that I even have to level this out).”

In her resignation notice, Homosexual wrote, “It has been distressing to have doubt solid on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values which might be basic to who I’m—and scary to be subjected to non-public assaults and threats fueled by racial animus.”