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Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said Monday night that Harvard’s governing board was reluctant to fire University President Claudine Gay following her controversial comments before Congress about the rise in antisemitism on campus over concerns it would appear they were conceding to him.

Ackman, a Harvard alumnus who has been critical of the university’s response to antisemitic behavior on campus, said reporters informed him that one of the board’s reasons for not firing Gay was that they did not want the public to suspect they were “kowtowing” to him.

“I have been told now by two reporters that one of the factors that made it challenging for the @Harvard board to fire Gay was that they were concerned it would look like they were kowtowing to me,” Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“In other words, the reporters explained, quoting the trustees: ‘Had Bill just stopped tweeting, we would have come to the right answer.’ So much for Veritas,” he continued.

During last week’s hearing before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, House GOP Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., demanded Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth answer whether calls on campus for intifada, or the genocide of Jews, violated their respective universities’ codes of conduct or rules against bullying and harassment.

“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay responded, prompting Stefanik to press her for a yes or no answer.

“Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct, and we do take action,” Gay said.