Penn president, board chair resign amid backlash to remarks on antisemitism

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) slams the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University over their answers to questions about antisemitism. (Video: The Washington Post)

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University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned after intense criticism from donors, alumni and others of her testimony at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses. Scott L. Bok, chair of Penn’s board of trustees, said in a note to the campus community that Magill will stay in the role until an interim president is appointed. After that, she will remain a tenured faculty member at the university’s law school.

The note was sent shortly before Bok announced that he would step down as board chair. In a separate note, he wrote: “Former President Liz Magill last week made a very unfortunate misstep — consistent with that of two peer university leaders sitting alongside her — after five hours of aggressive questioning before a congressional committee. Following that, it became clear that her position was no longer tenable, and she and I concurrently decided that it was time for her to exit.”

“The world should know that Liz Magill is a very good person and a talented leader who was beloved by her team,” he said. “She is not the slightest bit antisemitic. Working with her was one of the great pleasures of my life.”

The moves came a day before Penn’s board of trustees was set to meet amid the growing leadership crisis at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia.

“It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution,” Magill said in the note to campus. “It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”

Magill came under withering criticism after her testimony before a House committee on Tuesday in which she declined to state plainly that a call for genocide against Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct. Magill told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) it would violate the school’s code of conduct “if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.” When pressed by Stefanik, Magill said: “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”

Magill appeared at the hearing alongside Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth. The presidents sought to defend values of free expression, while assuring that they would punish harassment or bullying. To many, though, the academics’ attempts at nuance came off as weak-kneed and legalistic equivocations.

Stefanik, who was among those who had called for Magill’s ouster, welcomed the news of her resignation. “One down. Two to go,” Stefanik wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday evening. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America.”

“Harvard and @MIT, do the right thing,” Stefanik wrote. “The world is watching.”

Spokespeople for Harvard and MIT did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday. Gay, in an interview with the Harvard Crimson, apologized for remarks she made at the congressional hearing. Gay and Kornbluth gave similar answers to Magill’s when questioned by Stefanik.

Magill became Penn’s president in July 2022 after previously serving as provost at the University of Virginia and dean of Stanford Law School. Magill’s testimony alienated key constituents, including the state’s governor, the board of the Wharton School of Business, and an alumnus who is threatening to withhold a $100 million donation. A video Magill released late Wednesday, walking back her remarks from the hearing, did little to placate critics.

The presidents’ testimonies have reinvigorated a broader debate about where colleges draw the line between offensive speech and threatening conduct — an always thorny topic that has been rendered more so by the passions inflamed from the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza.

Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy at Penn, said Friday she thinks the university’s guidelines on open expression would prohibit a call for genocide against Jews. And she’s troubled that anyone would suggest otherwise. Some lines need to be drawn, she said.

“The place to start is by ruling out calls for violence against members of ethnic, religious or racial minorities,” Finkelstein said. “That’s my own view, and I’m quite shocked to see it’s not the dominant view, apparently, of college presidents.”

Magill saw notable erosions of support in powerful places. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) described Magill’s comments as “absolutely shameful,” telling reporters last week, “It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” The Wharton board, whose members include some members of Penn’s board of trustees, said in a letter to Magill that Penn needed a change in leadership. And lawyers representing Ross Stevens, founder and chief executive of Stone Ridge Asset Management, said in a letter Thursday that he had grounds to rescind $100 million in shares donated to Penn. Stevens would discuss the matter “if, and when, there is a new university president in place,” the letter said.

In contrast, the MIT Corporation, which is the board of trustees for the institute, expressed its “full and unreserved support” for Kornbluth.

Still, on Friday, a letter signed by more than 70 members of Congress called on the governing boards for Harvard, Penn and MIT to remove the presidents.

On Saturday, the Wharton Board of Advisors issued a statement saying it looks forward to working with the board to take immediate action “to improve the safety and security of the entire Penn community.”

“We are all united in our desire to see that Penn remains a world-class educational institution.”

The executive committee of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, however, was critical Saturday of what it called “distortions and attacks” on some faculty and students in recent months. “Trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have repeatedly misrepresented the words and deeds of Penn faculty and students who have expressed concern for Palestinian civilians and criticized the war in Gaza, going so far as to suggest that faculty who have publicly condemned Hamas were Hamas supporters and that groups protesting genocide were calling for genocide,” the group said in a statement.

“These attacks strike at the heart of the mission of an educational institution: to foster open, critical, and rigorous research and teaching that can produce knowledge for the public good in a democratic society,” the committee said.

At Penn, Jewish students on Friday said they were disappointed in Magill and some echoed calls for her to resign or be forced out. But they spoke more broadly of the fear that they and many other Jewish students nationally have reported experiencing since the Israel-Hamas war began in October. Several said they worried that forcing out the president was an overly simple answer to the much more complicated problem of antisemitism.

“I think this is the start of the healing process of Penn to restore its reputation,” Eyal Yakoby, 21, a senior at Penn majoring in political science and Middle Eastern studies, said Saturday. Campus leaders had been indifferent to campus hostilities and violations of campus policies, he said. “What now needs to happen is those policies are upheld: Students and faculty are held accountable for breaking not only policies, but the law. And restore Penn into being an academic institution.”

Yakoby is one of two students who is suing the university for failing to respond to antisemitic incidents on campus. The suit, filed early this month, alleges Penn has become “an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred.” The two plaintiffs say Penn has run afoul of the federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, among other protected categories.

Yakoby, who is American Israeli and Jewish, said Friday the lawsuit came after months of inaction from administrators. He described a string of antisemitic acts over the past three months: a swastika on campus, then the hosting of what he called antisemitic speakers, then a break-in at Penn Hillel, then the vandalism of Chabad House, then a bomb threat against Hillel.

In addition to the lawsuit, Yakoby also testified before Congress about antisemitism on Penn’s campus — on the same day Magill did.

Noah Rubin, a junior who studies electrical engineering and economics, found out Magill had resigned when someone knocked on his door Saturday night — just as Shabbat was winding down — to share the news.

Rubin, 21, who is Jewish, spent part of last weekend locked in his dorm room, fearing for his own safety as hundreds of protesters marching parallel to campus chanted, “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab!” Rubin said he has found Penn’s administration and some professors unwelcoming to Jews, and in some cases openly antisemitic — mentioning cases in which professors have celebrated the Oct. 7 attack on social media or attended pro-Hamas rallies.

Rubin hopes, he said, that some professors will face discipline — both at Penn and campuses across America, on which, he said, antisemitism has become all too common. “This is just the first of many actions that need to be taken,” he said of Magill’s resignation. “The first of many things that will happen in the reformation of our college campuses to eradicate antisemitism.”

On Penn’s campus on Saturday, there was a mix of reactions to the resignation.

“It’s not really that surprising,” said Vinay Khosla, 20, a junior who is studying English and political science. “People were pushing for her resignation for a long time. … That being said, I think that it sets a really bad precedent that donors are the ones who are in power at the school and not academics, not administrators even. And also, I think that whoever they replace her with is going to be a lot harsher towards student activism and free speech.”

Aarav Jilka, 18, a freshman studying finance and business analytics, said he hopes attention can now shift to other things.

“It caused a lot of people pain on campus after what she said … or lacked, what she didn’t say honestly,” Jilka said. “So in that sense, I’m glad that she resigned, because that way there’s more attention back on how we can help students on campus who are Jewish, who are Palestinian, and who identify [with] different groups and give them support instead of focusing on all these trials.”

In her video message Wednesday, Magill said she was focused in the hearing on long-standing Penn policies, which say “speech alone is not punishable.” In her view, however, a call for genocide against Jews “would be harassment or intimidation,” Magill said.

The presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT testified on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5 about antisemitism on their campuses since the eruption of war in Israel and Gaza. (Video: Reuters)

For all of the outrage the presidents’ remarks at the congressional hearing have engendered, free speech advocates say they worry about colleges cracking down on protected speech because of political pressure. Unsatisfying though the answer may seem, deciding whether speech violates a university’s code of conduct “does depend on context,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“A call for genocide is a form of advocacy — advocacy of violence,” Terr said. Advocacy is generally protected by the First Amendment and free speech principles, he said. There are only narrow exceptions to those protections, Terr said, including a true threat of violence, incitement to imminent unlawful action, or speech that meets the legal standard for discriminatory harassment.

“A lot of the speech that we’re seeing on campus now wouldn’t fall into these exceptions and should be protected,” Terr said. “So the university presidents are right.”

Much of the criticism the presidents are getting now is “misguided,” Terr said, and coming from people who have been frustrated by other past incidences of censorship on college campuses. “The pressure should be on them to protect free speech consistently, not expand the censorship,” he said.

Private universities, like Penn, MIT and Harvard, are not bound by the First Amendment. But leaders of private institutions say they are guided by principles of free expression that are critical to academic freedom.

Discussions about where free speech ends and harassment begins are nuanced — and a congressional hearing isn’t a great place for nuance, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley.

“Even advocacy of genocide is protected by the First Amendment,” Chemerinsky said. “And some believe that defending what Israel is doing in Gaza is defending genocide. Some believe that supporting abortion rights is defending genocide.”

Campus officials should condemn hateful speech, Chemerinsky said, “and there’s a point at which the advocacy is so pervasive it constitutes harassment.”

“But this is what I mean by there’s a need for nuance — and [the hearing] just wasn’t a forum to express nuance.”

Rick Fox, a rabbi who leads a Jewish empowerment and education group on Penn’s campus, said Friday he was sickened by Magill’s testimony before Congress. At the same time, he said he worried that, if Magill were forced out, she’d be replaced by someone just as fond of legal platitudes.

“I don’t want Liz Magill to be sacrificed so they can say, ‘Okay, we did something’ and they actually did nothing,” Fox said. “I’d much prefer she be courageous and stay and stand up for the Jewish people — but if she’s not able to, then that’s when she needs to step down.”

Suman Bhattacharyya, reporting from Philadelphia, contributed to this report.