Liz Magill, the University of Pennsylvania’s president, has voluntarily stepped down following bipartisan calls for her resignation, two years after her inauguration.
Magill announced her resignation on December 9, 2023, four days after her controversial answer at a congressional hearing, which was organized as part of a larger effort by the federal government to assess whether or not prominent universities were doing enough to address the rising threat of anti-semitism on their campuses.
Magill, along with the presidents of Harvard University and MIT, faced harsh backlash after being accused of dodging a question about whether or not a call for the genocide of Jews would violate their student conduct policies. Read the Bi-Co’s coverage of the story here.
Those calling for Magill’s resignation included major Penn donor Ross Steven, who threatened to withdraw a $100 million gift to the college.
Students protesting for Palestinian rights have previously been misrepresented as calling for the genocide of Jews with the chant “Israel, we charge you with genocide,” according to AP News.
Magill’s resignation was announced in an email released earlier this afternoon, written by Scott L. Bok, who was chairman of Penn’s Board of Trustees and has since also stepped down.
Bok released this statement following his resignation: “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. Working with her was one of the great pleasures of my life. Worn down by months of relentless external attacks, she was not herself last Tuesday. Over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong. It made for a dreadful 30-second sound bite in what was more than five hours of testimony.”
Magill will stay on as interim president at Penn until a new president is selected. Penn does not have a succession plan in place, according to reports by CNN.
