University of Pennsylvania president resigns after widely-panned remarks about Jewish genocide
President Liz Magill had come under fire for what many deemed a callously legalistic response to a question about antisemitism
Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. Photo by Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe December 9, 2023
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned on Saturday, four days after her response to a question about antisemitism at a Congressional hearing angered many Jewish students, alumni and donors, and drew rebukes from Congress and the state’s Jewish governor.
“I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania,” Scott Bok, chair of the university’s board of trustees, said in an email to university alumni. He also said that Magill will remain a tenured faculty member at the university’s law school.
The board was slated to meet on Sunday to reconsider her future at the university.
Magill’s resignation followed days of calls for her ouster, including from the board of Wharton, the university’s business school.
Wharton graduate David Pottruck, the former CEO of Charles Schwab, for whom the university’s health and fitness center is named, spearheaded a letter from alumni expressing no confidence in Magill, and sent it to the school’s trustees on Friday. On Thursday Ross Stevens, CEO of the financial services firm Stone Ridge Asset Management, told the university in a letter from his attorneys that he would rescind about $100 million of a 2019 gift to Penn.
Additionally, more than 70 members of Congress Friday called for the trustees of Penn — as well as Harvard and MIT — to fire their presidents over their responses to antisemitism on campus, according to Reuters.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called Magill’s resignation a “wake-up call” on X, formerly Twitter. “Campus administrators must protect their Jewish students with the same passion they bring to protecting all students,” he said.
I hope this signals a new start for @Penn & a wake-up call for all college presidents. Campus administrators must protect their Jewish students with the same passion they bring to protecting all students. They can't hide behind language coached by their attorneys & look the other…
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) December 9, 2023
Magill is the first college president to resign after protests and counter-protests over the Israel-Hamas war began roiling college campuses two months ago. The former dean of Stanford Law School, Magill was inaugurated as Penn’s president in 2022, and promised to protect free speech on campus.
But like many college presidents, she has struggled since Oct. 7 — when Hamas attacked Israel and prompted a war in Gaza — to balance supporting free speech rights with concerns that some speech has gone too far.
“It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution,” Magill said in a statement released Saturday. “It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”
Shortly after Bok announced Magill’s resignation he announced his own. Julie Platt, the board’s vice chair and the chair of Jewish Federations of North America, is now the interim chair. She is a 1979 graduate of the school and the mother of Broadway star Ben Platt.
A lawyer’s reponse
Magill, at a House committee meeting on antisemitism Tuesday, had a chance to quell anger over her handling of the protests, as well as a Palestinian literary festival the university sponsored in September. Throughout the fall, many Jewish students and parents charged, anti-Israel rhetoric had created a hostile environment for Jews on campus, and had at times crossed the line into hate speech.
But in a moment that went viral, Magill hedged when asked by Rep. Elise Stepanik (R-NY), whether calls for genocide against Jews would constitute harassment on Penn’s campus, according to the university’s code of conduct. Stefanik asked the same of Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
All three presidents said the answer to Stefanik’s question would depend on context.
Their answers might actually be true according to those policies, some legal scholars pointed out. But to many, they came off as insensitively legalistic.
Magill at one point in the hearing said Penn’s code of conduct would categorize a call to genocide against Jews as harassment under certain circumstances. “If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment,” she said.
MIT’s board issued a statement of support for Kornbluth earlier in the week. Gay apologized on Friday for her remarks. And in a video posted to X, Magill also tried to temper her comments, describing the call for the genocide of Jews “evil, plain and simple.”
“I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies, aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” she said in the video. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”
A Video Message from President Liz Magill pic.twitter.com/GlPE3QZU4P
— Penn (@Penn) December 6, 2023
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, both of whom are Jewish, were among those criticized Magill for her statements in front of Congress, although neither said she should lose her job.
“Frankly, I thought her comments were absolutely shameful,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday. “It should not be hard to condemn genocide.”
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