Harvard Business School, which had declared itself "thrilled" to host at an upcoming AI conference a businessman who was ostracized in Silicon Valley for social media posts that demonized Israel, has now canceled the event.
The Washington Free Beacon wrote on April 28 about the conference under the headline, "Harvard Business School Is ‘Thrilled To Welcome’ Keffiyeh-Wearing Israel-Demonizer Who Uses ‘Retard’ as a Slur."
The story reported on Harvard Business School email invitations to alumni and social media posts touting Amjad Masad, the CEO of a Foster City, California-based artificial intelligence company called Replit. "We’re thrilled to welcome Amjad Masad, Founder & CEO of Replit, to the Leading with AI 2026 conference at Harvard Business School, May 14-15," an email invitation from HBS Alumni Relations, obtained by the Free Beacon, said. "Amjad just raised $400M in a Series D and unveiled Agent 4; an AI that can vibe code an entire company from scratch. He’s not just building a product. He’s redefining what it means to be a ‘developer’—and what it means to run a business."
The Free Beacon article reported on social media posts by Masad. It also recapped an interview he gave to the San Francisco Standard in which he said his company had a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia but would not work with the "illegitimate and criminal government" of Israel.
Masad blocked me on X after the article appeared.
Harvard has been trying to put a new emphasis on civil discourse, which inviting a speaker with a habit of repeatedly, publicly calling people "retard" or "retarded" on social media might be in tension with. The university is also facing litigation and federal investigations over antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.
Perhaps as a result, the day after the Free Beacon article was published, the conference, which had been scheduled to take place in Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall, was canceled.
The event page no longer features Masad’s photo. Instead, it features a brief note attributing the event’s cancellation to a lack of advance ticket sales. "Our goal at the AI Institute is to ensure the School’s alumni and other leaders have the AI knowledge, skills, and tools they need in the flow of work. We have been monitoring registrations for [the] Leading With AI 2026 conference, and they have not met our desired threshold to effectively serve our mission. As a result, we have made the decision to pivot to alternative formats and approaches," the note says, without identifying those formats or approaches. "We look forward to communicating more about our plans soon."
Harvard Business School also has deleted a Facebook post that had promoted Masad’s appearance at the conference with breathless language: "Replit has grown revenue five-fold in six months. Its AI agent can write, debug, and deploy working software from a plain-language prompt. And Amjad has been at the forefront of one of the most disruptive shifts in how businesses are built. Whether you're a founder, executive, or just trying to understand where AI is taking us — this is the room you want to be in." The link to the post now reads, "This content isn't available right now. When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted."
A spokesman for the business school and the professor who had been in charge of the event, Karim Lakhani, did not immediately respond to emails seeking clarification on whether Masad’s appearance had been canceled, postponed, or just moved online to a virtual format.
