Two other college presidents could also step down due to growing pressure.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has officially stepped down less than a year and a half after she was first appointed to the role. This move comes just days after her congressional testimony on antisemitism on campus drew swift backlash from students, faculty, and donors, including the loss of a gift worth $100 million from alum Ross Stevens.
Scott Bok, the chair of the university’s board of trustees, announced the news in a letter on Saturday. “On behalf of the entire Penn community, I want to thank President Magill for her service to the University as President and wish her well,” he wrote.
Bok, who has supported Magill throughout the controversy over the school’s response to the Israel-Hamas War, also submitted his own resignation and expects to share details about interim leadership “in the coming days.”
This isn’t the first time Magill has faced backlash: In September, she was criticized for an on-campus event celebrating Palestinian culture that included speakers with a history of making antisemitic comments.
As the Ivy League looks to new leadership, here’s what we know about the plan moving forward.
Is Penn President Liz Magill leaving?
The short answer is, not completely. Bok said in his letter that Magill has “voluntarily tendered her resignation,” but added that she will stay on as interim president until a new president is appointed. She also won’t be leaving the school altogether — she’ll stay on as a tenured faculty member at the Penn Carey Law School.
Bok declined to stay on to help with the transition of the new university president, so Julie Platt, the vice chair of the board of trustees, has stepped in as interim chair. “While I was asked to remain in that role for the remainder of my term in order to help with the presidential transition,” he wrote, “I concluded that, for me, now was the right time to depart.”
In Bok’s note to campus, Magill included her own response. “It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution,” she wrote. “It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”
Why did Penn President Liz Magill resign?
Calls for Magill’s resignation exploded after she, along with the presidents of Harvard and MIT, testified before Congress about their responses to antisemitism on college campuses.
In their testimonies, each of the university leaders condemned antisemitism. The blowback was primarily focused on a line of questioning from Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who repeatedly asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Penn’s code of conduct. “If the speech turns into conduct it can be harassment, yes,” Magill said. When pressed further, Magill told Stefanik, “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”
Shortly after, Magill faced criticism for seemingly dodging the question. The next day, she posted a video on X, elaborated on her answer, and condemned calls for the genocide of Jewish people in more unequivocal terms.
“At that moment I was focused on our university’s long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which says that speech alone is not punishable,” she 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 perpetuate.”
How did lawmakers respond to the testimony?
In response to the congressional testimonies from the three presidents, more than 70 lawmakers, including Stefanik, signed a bipartisan letter on Friday calling for her to step down from her post, along with Harvard University President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who both similarly floundered on the same question.
In his statement, Bok acknowledged that Magill “made a very unfortunate misstep” in her testimony “after five hours of aggressive questioning before a congressional committee.” He also went on to praise her as being a “very good person” and “talented leader,” who isn’t “the slightest bit antisemitic.”
“Working with her was one of the great pleasures of my life,” Bok concluded.
What’s next?
Now that Magill has stepped down, all eyes are on Gay and Kornbluth. Like Magill, they both stopped short of condemning calls for the genocide of Jews as going against campus harassment and bullying codes.
Gay responded to Stefanik’s line of questioning in similar terms, saying that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.” Meanwhile, Kornbluth said she hadn’t heard of students on her campus calling for the genocide of Jews, adding that kind of rhetoric would be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.”
In a statement on Saturday, Stefanik said Gay and Kornbluth should follow Magill’s lead and resign. “One down. Two to go,” said Stefanik on X, referring to the two college presidents. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America.”
Others also found the university presidents’ testimony to be inadequate. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called Magill’s testimony “catastrophic and clarifying” and wrote on X that he hoped her resignation served as “a wake-up call” for 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.
But it looks like Gay’s job is safe for now. The Harvard Corporation, the highest governing body at Harvard, expressed support for her “continued leadership” on Monday. This comes after over 700 faculty members and alumni signed a letter, calling on the university to resist pressure to fire her over concerns that it was at odds with its “commitment to academic freedom.”
“In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay,” the committee wrote in a statement.
Why is this raising concerns about free speech?
While many have celebrated Magill’s exit as proof that her response was unacceptable, others have called it a loss for free speech, worrying that it could prevent students and professors from freely speaking their minds.
The board of advisers at Penn’s Wharton business school has proposed a policy that would “discipline” students or staff who “engage in hate speech, whether veiled or explicit,” according to Axios. But Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education programs at PEN America, warns that that the proposal “is vague, and threatens to ban wide swaths of speech.”
Other colleges could follow suit: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a letter to state college and university presidents Saturday promising to take “aggressive” action that could include pulling funding against schools that “fail to clearly and unequivocally denounce antisemitism and calls for genocide of the Jewish people.”
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, told The Washington Post that this shift has “invited new players to the game” — namely politicians and donors, who could play more of a role in shaping free speech codes. “This is a sad day for higher education,” he said.
