Harvard board chair Penny Pritzker emerges as a target in Trump administration’s higher ed fight

The fight between two of America’s most prominent institutions – the federal government and Harvard University – is getting personal.

The fight between two of America’s most prominent institutions – the federal government and Harvard University – is getting personal. While President Donald Trump and Harvard President Alan Garber have been trading public barbs amid the legal battle over academic freedom and $2.2 billion in federal funding, hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman this week trained his criticism on the top official of Harvard’s governing board: “The mismanagement here,” Ackman, a frequent critic of his alma mater, told CNBC, “is (with) Penny Pritzker.” Pritzker, 66, a Harvard alumna, former Democratic Cabinet official and one of the world’s richest people, in 2022 became the leader of the Harvard Corporation, the board in charge of university operations. The role makes her the equivalent of Harvard’s board chairperson, with Garber as the university’s top administrative officer — whom the board wields the power to hire and fire. Pritzker’s tenure as the corporation’s senior fellow largely has been defined by the issue now at the crux of the Republican White House’s threats to pull even more money from the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college: Harvard’s handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment and protests over the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory siege of Gaza. Taking office in January 2024, Garber called it “an extraordinarily painful and disorienting time,” and since then, disciplinary and academic policy changes have been made, with more recommended just last week by university task forces that spent 16 months probing antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus.