Days after University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill’s much maligned remarks at a congressional hearing on antisemitism cost the Ivy League school a $100 million donation, the board of Penn’s Wharton school of business is calling on Magill to step down with “immediate effect.”
“[The Board] has been, and remains, deeply concerned about the dangerous and toxic culture on our campus that has been led by a select group of students and faculty and has been permitted by University leadership,” the board’s letter to Magill read. “As a result of the University leadership’s stated beliefs and collective failure to act, our board respectfully suggests to you and the Board of Trustees that the University requires new leadership with immediate effect.”
When asked by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce on Tuesday if student calls for genocide of the Jewish people constitute harassment, Magill declined to give a straightforward answer, saying only that “if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.” Magill also said repeatedly that it is “a context-dependent decision” as to deciding whether such calls violate Penn’s code of conduct.
Magill retracted parts of her congressional testimony in a video she released on Wednesday, and added that she would “initiate a serious and careful look at [Penn’s] policies” on hate speech.
“There was a moment during yesterday’s congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies,” she said. “In that moment, I was focused on our University’s longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. 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. It’s evil—plain and simple.”
Wharton’s board released its letter calling for Magill’s resignation on Thursday. The board has met an unprecedented eight times since November 16 to address the alarming rise of antisemitism on Penn’s campus, and recommended on November 16 in a letter to Magill that she change Penn’s code of conduct to affirm that students, faculty, or staff cannot “celebrate or advocate for the murder, killing, genocide, or annihilation of any individual classmate or any group of individuals in our community.” Axios reports that Magill’s sudden willingness to take a “careful look” at Penn’s policies was absent when the university president declined to make the board’s requested changes last week.
Magill’s testimony wasn’t just the tipping point for Wharton’s board of advisors. Ross Stevens, the founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, withdrew a $100 million donation to Penn on Thursday.
“Mr. Stevens and Stone Ridge are appalled by the University’s stance on antisemitism on campus,” Stevens’s lawyers wrote to Penn senior vice president Wendy White. “Its permissive approach to hate speech calling for violence against Jews and laissez faire attitude toward harassment and discrimination against Jewish students would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge.”
Penn is one of many Ivy League universities embroiled in controversy over university administrators’ response to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also defended antisemitic speech on campuses in congressional testimony this week.
Democratic Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) called on university presidents to resign following Tuesday’s hearing and said that “their statements were abhorrent.”
“Jewish students are terrified on these campuses,” she said. “You have examples of [students] being barricaded into rooms. Students have been told, ‘we cannot guarantee your safety, so stay in your dorm room.’ That is the definition of harassment: To instill fear. And to not have a climate where kids can thrive, and go to school, and feel protected, they’re failing in the worst way as college presidents.”
Eyel Yakoby, a student at Penn, said that he “along with most of campus, sought refuge in our rooms as classmates and professors chanted proudly for the genocide of Jews” when Penn students rioted in support of terrorism last weekend. Yakoby said students and faculty members at Penn has referred to Hamas’s slaughter of Jews as “the glorious October 7” and said that “you’re a dirty little Jew, you deserve to die.”
“I refuse to go back to 1939 when Jews had to hide their religious symbols and hide who they are due to the intimidation and harassment of us,” Yakoby said. “I used to think this was nonsense, fear-mongering, until I was made aware that Penn recommended students not wear clothing-slash-accessories related to Judaism.”