TED Fellows Quit As Bill Ackman Is Named Speaker In Annual Confab

The US-Canadian Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) organization has been hit with resignations and criticisms after naming the controversial billionaire Bill Ackman, who was instrumental in forcing out Harvard’s president over antisemitism allegations, among its main speakers at this year’s conference, Chris McGreal reported for The Guardian.

Four TED fellows, led by the astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz and the filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky, have resigned from the group, accusing it of taking an anti-Palestinian stand and aligning itself “with enablers and supporters of genocide” in Gaza. I Photo: TED Blog - TED Talks

Four TED fellows, led by the astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz and the filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky, have resigned from the group, accusing it of taking an anti-Palestinian stand and aligning itself “with enablers and supporters of genocide” in Gaza.

“The 2024 main stage speaker Bill Ackman has defended Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and has cynically weaponized antisemitism in his program to purge American universities of Pro-Palestinian freedom of speech,” the pair wrote to Chris Anderson, who leads TED, and Lily James Olds, director of the fellows program.

“We’ve become increasingly concerned about the fundamental values and moral compass of the organization over the years, but with this year’s speaker selection, it is clear TED has crossed a red line.”

The conference will be held in Vancouver, Canada, in April, under the banner "The Brave and the Brilliant.” Ackman, a Jew, has justified the genocide in Gaza in which more than 25,700 Palestinians have been killed and the forced removal of about 2 million Palestinians from their homes.

He has described criticism of Israel as antisemitism and called for the blacklisting from employment of US students who signed petitions denouncing Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Ackman, critics say, is so stupid he does not understand the meaning of antisemitism and Zionism. Semites include Arabs, Palestinians, and Jews who speak Semitic languages that evolved in the Arabian Peninsula.

Hebrew is a Semitic language. Zionism is the movement started by Theodor Herzl that calls for the establishment of the Jewish homeland in the Levant, and the UK gave away Palestine to the Jews in 1948. Thirty other TED fellows supported the four who resigned.

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