This is a developing story and will continue to be updated.
After four days of intense pressure from politicians, donors, and alumni, M. Elizabeth Magill has resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania, as has Scott L. Bok, chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees.
Those decisions stemmed from Magill’s remarks at a contentious congressional hearing, in which she did not directly answer questions about whether students’ advocating the genocide of Jews would break the university’s code of conduct. The hearing, at which the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also testified, quickly became a national flashpoint, with many critics seeing the leaders’ remarks as legalistic and lacking empathy.
The backlash to Magill’s equivocation was swift, with Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, setting the tone by saying on Wednesday that Magill had “failed” to “speak and act with moral clarity” and urging the board, on which he serves as a nonvoting member, to meet and discuss her future at Penn. Trustees did so on Thursday, and while no immediate action was taken, pressure on the president continued to mount as prominent politicians and Penn donors weighed in. A second emergency board meeting had been scheduled for Sunday.
In short order after the hearing, the board chair of Penn’s business school, Marc Rowan, urged trustees to withdraw their support for her; the state’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, chastised Magill for not taking a more definitive stance; one major donor withdrew his pledge to give Penn $100 million; and another, the former CEO of the financial-services company Charles Schwab, called for Magill’s removal. Though Penn is a private institution, multiple state senators also said they would withhold funding for its School of Veterinary Medicine until Magill resigned.
Magill’s departure is a pivotal moment in higher ed’s longstanding reckoning over where the line between free speech and protecting students lies. And it’s the most illustrative example yet of how college leaders have struggled to respond to the Israel-Hamas war, with many students and faculty members — and even some fellow presidents — dismissing their statements as lacking substance or not taking a strong-enough stance against Hamas.
In a statement announcing his departure as board chair, Bok said that Magill had “made a very unfortunate misstep.”
“The world should know that Liz Magill is a very good person and a talented leader who was beloved by her team. She is not the slightest bit antisemitic,” Bok said. “Worn down by months of relentless external attacks, she was not herself last Tuesday.”
A Contentious Exchange
During Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, asked Magill whether students’ chants of “intifada” during campus protests violated Penn’s code of conduct. In a back-and-forth that lasted approximately 90 seconds, Magill said that a comment calling for the genocide of Jewish people could be harassment, if it were “directed and severe or pervasive,” and that it was a “context-dependent decision.”
Stefanik asked similar questions of the other two presidents present, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; both also said that whether calls for intifada violated campus policies depended on the context. Though the presidents’ remarks were similar — and both Magill and Gay were advised ahead of the hearing by the same law firm — Magill has faced the most criticism of the three. MIT’s board expressed its “full and unreserved” support for Kornbluth, while Gay apologized for her comments.
Magill, too, attempted damage control, releasing on Wednesday a video statement clarifying her comments. “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,” Magill said. “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.” She also promised to take “a serious and careful look at our policies” on free speech.
Those comments weren’t enough to placate Penn’s board, a handful of whose members urged the president during Thursday’s board meeting to think “long and hard” about whether she could continue to lead effectively, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. On the same day, Republicans on the House education committee followed up on the hearing by announcing that they would subject Penn, Harvard, MIT, and perhaps other colleges to “a formal investigation into the learning environments” and “policies and disciplinary procedures” on their campuses.
Dozens of members of the House — 70 Republicans and three Democrats — signed a letter on Friday demanding that all three presidents be removed.
“President Magill had three chances to set the record straight when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews violated UPenn’s code of conduct during our hearing on antisemitism,” said Virginia Foxx, a Republican of North Carolina and chair of the House education committee, in a statement on Saturday.
“What’s more shocking is that it took her more than 24 hours to clarify her comments, and even that clarification failed to include an apology to the Jewish students who do not feel safe on campus,” Foxx added. “I welcome her departure from UPenn.”
Stefanik said in a statement on Saturday that Magill’s resignation was “only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher-education institutions in America.”
In his statement, Bok said that Magill had been “over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes.” He said “she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong.”
A Short Tenure
Magill, 57, is leaving Penn after just a year and a half in the job. She arrived from the University of Virginia, where she spent two years as provost. A scholar of administrative and constitutional law, she was also dean of Stanford Law School. Magill will stay on until a replacement is found, and she remains a tenured faculty member at Penn’s law school, according to the statement from Bok about her departure. Julie Beren Platt, the vice chair of the board, will step into Bok’s job on an interim basis.
Though campuses across the nation have seen intense political turmoil since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Penn has been a locus of activity for even longer. The private institution faced heat for hosting a literature festival celebrating Palestinian authors in September.
Last week, two Penn students sued the university, saying it had not sufficiently responded to antisemitism on campus and citing “slurs” like “intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea” as preventing them from fully participating in campus life, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. Marc Rowan, board chair of the business school, has called for Magill and Bok to resign for months.
The Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors had spent weeks criticizing Magill for not sufficiently defending faculty members who faced “targeted harassment” for expressing solidarity with Palestinians. Magill’s administration, a letter from the chapter’s executive committee about the hearing read, “has failed to defend the safety and academic freedom of faculty and students who have voiced concern for Palestinian civilians.” In a statement after Magill’s resignation, the executive committee added that the influence of donors, lobbyists, and members of Congress to “destabilize” the university “reveals the need to restore a strong faculty voice in the governance of the institution.” It called on Magill’s replacement to advocate for shared governance and academic freedom, and to “correct what has become a dangerous myth suggesting that the defense of academic freedom and open expression is in any way contradictory to the fight against antisemitism.”
Magill’s resignation “allows the University of Pennsylvania to chart a new course in addressing antisemitism on campus,” Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who had previously called Magill’s testimony “offensive,” said in a statement.
Gregory C. Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in a statement that Magill’s successor will face a tall task. “Penn’s next leaders must recommit to the institution’s promises of free expression, not abandon them,” he said. “Giving administrators who had already been so eager to police speech and had applied such glaring double standards an even freer hand to stifle expression would be the worst possible result.”
The chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said on X that he hoped Magill’s decision was “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 way when it comes to antisemitism,” he wrote.
