If you’d like to diagnose a particularly acute case of Main-Character Syndrome as it pertains to the latest college-campus handwringing, might I suggest Bill Ackman? The controversial 57-year-old hedge fund manager has injected himself into the outrage over a messy congressional hearing on antisemitism in universities this month, most notably by becoming the leading voice of an all-out pressure campaign to force Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, to resign.

After a clipped video of three university presidents testifying before Congress appeared to show them waffling when asked how their schools address hypothetical calls for a Jewish genocide, Ackman cheered the resignation of University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, and made public threats to go after MIT President Sally Kornbluth. But it was the president of Harvard, Ackman’s alma mater, who became the target of his extreme and unadulterated ire.

In the past month, he has amplified misinformation around Gay’s career; shared a petition calling for a no-confidence vote on her leadership; boosted a tweet baselessly framing a letter that Gay wrote in 2020—calling for expanded “teaching and research on racial and ethnic inequality”—as a nefarious “agenda”; and tweeted myriad ridiculous and offensive statements about Gay, over and over. (They include accusing Harvard of only hiring Gay, a Black woman, to satisfy a diversity, equity, and inclusion requirement, as well as fatuous declarations about how “the DEI movement” has brought about “the McCarthy era Part II.”)

You don’t have to defend all parts of the presidents’ testimony—indeed, Gay herself apologized to the Harvard Crimson for getting “caught up” in “policies and procedures” in her responses—to recognize that bad-faith calls for these presidents to resign have been just a touch too loud.

There’s undoubtedly been an uptick in open antisemitic rhetoric and violence in the United States since Oct. 7, when Hamas forces killed, assaulted, and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli citizens. A small number of the many U.S. protests against Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip—which has now killed about 18,000 Palestinian civilians—have featured some antisemitic elements or some whitewashing of Hamas’ barbarity. All of this warrants unequivocal condemnation.

What it does not warrant, however, is a response that equates activists who are justly concerned over the mass displacement and death of Palestinian Arabs with neo-Nazis calling for Jewish genocide. Critiques of the state of Israel are not attacks on all Jewish people, but—surprise, surprise—right-wingers are not interested in navigating arguments about that in good faith. Instead, they have pounced on a tantalizing opportunity to attack “diversity” and the left through ham-fisted rage-bait.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the Republican chair of the House committee that oversaw the university hearing, has herself gleefully trafficked in........

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