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

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — 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.

But Ackman wants more: “It’s time for a change in leadership in the board at Harvard,” he said this week.

As the heat on the Boston-area Ivy League school and other US colleges intensifies – and the freeze on Harvard’s federal funds likely to stay in place well into summer – Pritzker now faces a tough fight for both her prestigious Harvard role and the future of the university from which she earned her bachelor’s in economics 44 years ago.

Pritzker has spent decades in the public eye

No one would accuse Penny Pritzker of fearing the spotlight.

After serving as Barack Obama’s commerce secretary from 2013 to 2017, the great-granddaughter of a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant became President Joe Biden’s point person on Ukraine’s economic recovery, using the position as a bully pulpit to call for coordinated help for the country as its war against Russia has dragged on.

Her public footprint as the singular senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation has been lighter. Although Pritzker frequently attends town halls and public functions, she does not often grant wide-ranging interviews about the university. One of the few she has given was to the university’s own public relations department in December, weeks before Trump’s second inauguration.

“Let’s not sugarcoat it – it’s been a painful and challenging year for Harvard, and I believe it’s important to acknowledge that even as we’ve begun to build for the future,” Pritzker said. “We’ve faced relentless scrutiny about every aspect of the University, from stakeholders inside and outside the institution.”

Harvard and Pritzker did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Pritzker, meanwhile, is one of the world’s richest women, with a net worth of $4 billion, slightly ahead of her younger brother, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, according to Forbes. Their father Don was president of the family’s Hyatt hotel chain, turning it into an international conglomerate, and in 2014, Penny Pritzker founded PSP Partners, which owns a large portfolio of real estate, marketing and information technology businesses.

The family remains among the most powerful in Chicago, and Pritzker has served on the boards of prominent Chicago-based companies, including Wrigley, TransUnion and LaSalle Bank.

Pritzkers worked, and tangled, with Trump

The Pritzker family is also no stranger to Trump, with contentious connections going back decades.

In the 1970s, when Penny Pritzker’s uncle Jay was operating the Hyatt chain, it signed a deal with Trump to buy a failing hotel in New York and rebrand it as the Grand Hyatt, marking Trump’s first major development in Manhattan.

The partnership soured over the next decade, and Trump sued the family in 1993, claiming it had taken advantage of his financial struggles.

“They attacked me when I was down,” Trump told the Chicago Tribune that year. “Now I’m doing great again and it’s my turn. I always said, the first time I got back on my feet, the Pritzkers would be the first people I’d go after.”

After two years of legal wrangling and lawsuits, Trump and Jay Pritzker settled in 1995, the New York Times reported.

Pritzker’s time in Harvard leadership marked by criticism

Ackman’s rebuke this week wasn’t the first time Pritzker has faced a call to resign.

After leading the search process that led to Claudine Gay being named Harvard president – and its first Black top executive – in late 2022, Pritzker said: “We are confident Claudine will be a thoughtful, principled, and inspiring president for all of Harvard.”

But by early 2024, Gay had come under withering criticism inside and outside the institution after she was called to testify about antisemitism on campus. Asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment, Gay responded, “It can be, depending on the context.”

Gay later apologized, but backlash from donors and separate plagiarism allegations ultimately forced her to resign.

As the controversy bubbled, Pritzker did not speak publicly, and her “silence was deafening,” management expert and Harvard graduate Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told CNN at the time.

Pritzker later did not apologize for the work of the search committee that chose Gay.

“We consulted extensively and considered a wide range of candidates before selecting Claudine Gay, who was unanimously selected as the right choice at that time,” Pritzker said in her interview with Harvard’s public relations unit.

The emergence of Harvard as a leader in the fight for academic independence has caused some critics to reassess Pritzker.

“The decision of Harvard President Alan Garber to take a stand by rejecting the Trump administration’s demands, and the strong leadership of Harvard’s board, led by Chair Penny Pritzker … is a watershed moment,” said a Time magazine op-ed cowritten by Sonnenfeld last month.

Harvard Corporation is at center of White House showdown

The Harvard Corporation – whose members choose replacements after their colleagues serve up to two six-year terms, the student-run Harvard Crimson has reported – is known for secrecy in its decision-making. As a private university, it does not have to hold public meetings, so what little is known about Pritzker’s leadership has come from news releases and leaks.

Early in the second Trump administration, Harvard officials had been in discussions with federal officials about how to address antisemitism on campus, something the university has acknowledged is a legitimate concern.

But after the White House sent a letter April 11 to Garber and Pritzker with demands ranging from school governance to the elimination of diversity initiatives in return for federal money, “Pritzker wanted to fight,” the New York Times reported last month, citing people briefed on the decision.

Then, Garber alone on April 14 released a sharply worded public statement, saying in part, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

The Trump administration responded furiously that same day, with the government’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announcing the $2.2 billion freeze and saying: “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

Harvard’s public refusal of Trump’s demands, Ackman asserted this week, was a counterproductive move that led to an unnecessary legal fight, as the university soon sued the government to restore its funding.

“It should have said, ‘President Trump, you make some good points,’” Ackman told CNBC, adding, “He wants to make a deal.”

Pritzker last week publicly acknowledged the criticism Harvard has faced but also argued greater government oversight is not the answer.

“I think in general, across the country, people don’t want our federal government running our universities and our colleges,” she said at the Semafor 2025 World Economy Summit.

Now, people inside and outside Harvard are watching to see if Pritzker, an athlete who has frequently competed in triathlons, can outrun another round of fierce criticism.

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