Former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s resignation has been met with celebration — and calls for the heads of Harvard and MIT to also step down over their failures to condemn antisemitism on campus.
Many saw Magill’s resignation on Saturday as the beginning of woke university presidents facing consequences for failing to condemn student calls for the genocide of Jews — though others believed it was a win for the censorship of pro-Palestinian voices.
“One down. Two to go,” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik posted on X following Magill’s announcement.
“@Harvard and @MIT, do the right thing,” the Republican wrote. “The world is watching.”
Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, grilled Magill, alongside alongside Harvard University President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth during the tense hearing last week.
She said 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.”
Stefanik also warned that Harvard and MIT can now “anticipate a robust and comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions’ negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, funding and overall leadership and governance.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay also is facing calls to quit. AP
MIT President Sally Kornbluth also is a target of critics after her testimony before Congress. APThe organization StopAntisemitism called Magill’s resignation “great news.”
It said her ouster came after Magill allowed “the once prestigious university to fall into a chaotic cesspool of Jew hatred this past year.”
“Let’s hope Harvard’s President Gay is next,” StopAntisemitism posted on X.
Billionaire Bill Ackman, who has called for Magill, Gay and Kornbluth’s resignations, celebrated the news of Magill stepping down by saying that “morality has spoken.”
He previously said there is “hope for UPenn” if Magill resigns.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned on Saturday following her disastrous Congressional testimony. APBillboard trucks calling for Gay to be fired were seen circling the Massachusetts campus on Sunday.
The privately-funded trucks read “FIRE GAY” and were accompanied by photos of Gay during her appearance before Congress, according to Fox News.
The three university presidents, during the hearing, repeatedly skirted Stefanik’s direct question asking whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate their schools’ codes of conduct.
Magill infamously replied that “it is a context-dependent decision.”
Gay apologized for her remarks in an interview with school newspaper The Harvard Crimson on Thursday, and said she had the support of the Harvard Corporation, which had not publicly commented on the calls for her resignation.
It and the school’s Board of Overseers — Harvard’s governing bodies — convened Sunday to discuss Gay’s leadership, the backlash to her testimony and whether the university should issue a public statement, according to the Crimson.
The executive committee of the MIT Corporation, meanwhile, said Kornbluth had their “full and unreserved support” in a statement Thursday.
Liyam Chitayat, and Israeli PhD student at MIT, gave an impassioned speech calling out Kornbluth for her comments and the executive board for its response.
“Since the executive board responded to this pathetic congressional hearing of our President Sally Kornbluth by stating that they support Sally for her ‘excellent moral compass,’ I have to ask all of you about this continuous obsession with context,” Chitayat said in the speech, a video of which was posted online Saturday night.
“I want someone to tell me, when is the right context to come and urinate on the window of the prayer room at MIT Hillel in front of the Jewish praying students inside there?” said Chitayat, while highlighting some of the antisemitic attacks Jewish students at MIT have recently endured.
“Tell me when is the right context to respond to reports of students facing blatant antisemitism by telling them, ‘Well, you can try talking to the police, you can go to therapy or you can go back to where you came from?’” she continued. “I want to know when a dozen students are allowed to storm in and harass individual staff members that work, or are Jewish and are Israeli.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik’s subjected the college heds to repeated questioning. ZUMAPRESS.com“Somehow, there’s a context in which you can tell Jewish students not to come to the entrance of MIT and go to the back door to their classes,” Chitayat, a doctoral student studying computational and systems biology at MIT, added.
“There is context where it makes sense that 70% of Jewish students at MIT do not show any sign that they’re Jewish because they’re scared. There is a context where a chaplain advisor is allowed to stop an event four times to say that Israelis are European racists, white colonizers, right before asking who in this room eats kosher.”
Chitayat went on to say that she sees the faces of some of the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas in those of her own family, and when she looks in the mirror, “I see the face of Naama Levy, who was seen being dragged through the streets of Gaza with blood gushing through her thighs.”
She then turned her attention to Kornbluth and Gay, addressing them both by name as she asked: “When you look in the mirror what do you see?”
Billionaire Bill Ackman celebrated Magill’s resignation. REUTERSOthers have taken Magill’s resignation and the push for the other school presidents to step down as censorship for pro-Palestine protests, which have persisted on the Pennsylvania campus and others around the US, with protesters chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a chant many claim is calling for the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel.
Reporter Alex Kane said the push for Magill’s resignation was “not solely” about her comments. alexbkane.comAlex Kane, a reporter with “Jewish Currents” magazine claimed that the push for Magill’s resignation is “not solely” about her, posting that: “The main story is a McCarthyist atmosphere consuming college campuses over calls for Palestinian liberation.
“Magill tepidly defended free speech for Palestinian advocates, then made a big PR misstep and fell into a right-wing trap,” he claimed.
“Al Jazeera” reporter Laila Al-Arian noted that Magill had been facing criticism for months — ever since the university hosted a “Palestine Writes” festival, which featured a speaker who called for “death to Israel” and another who had worn a Nazi-inspired outfit.
“The President of [UPenn] Liz Magill was under attack for months for simply allowing a literary festival called ‘Palestine Writes’ that featured writers, scholars and artists to take place on campus,” Al-Arian wrote. “The efforts to shut down and censor Palestinian voices are relentless.”
Magill had been under increasing pressure from both donors and lawmakers when the Ivy League school suddenly announced her resignation on Saturday.
Scott L. Bok, chairman of its board of trustees, said both he and Magill had “voluntarily” resigned their posts, noting Magill would stay on until an interim president was appointed, with a plan for new leadership to be announced in the coming days.
Bok also defended Magill, saying she simply “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.”
He went on to praise the ousted president as a “very good person and talented leader” who “is not the slightest bit antisemitic.”
Bok also claimed Magill was “worn down by months of relentless attacks” and “provided a legalistic answer to a moral question” that “made for a dreadful 30-second sound bite in what was more than five hours of testimony.
“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,” he said in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
A source close to situation previously told The Post that the mood was sad Saturday as 27 Penn trustees met for two hours without Magill’s or Bok’s knowledge and decided to recommend that she consider resignation.
The Post has reached out to other board members for their reactions as well.
Jewish leader Julie Platt is now taking over as chairman of the board of trustees until a permanent replacement can be found.
“As current vice chair, Julie was the clear choice for agreeing to serve in this capacity during this time of transition,” the executive committee of the Board of Trustees said in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
In her acceptance, Platt touted her work to end antisemitism on campus
“As vice chair of the university’s board these past several months, I worked hard from the inside to address the rising issues of antisemitism on campus,” Platt said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“Unfortunately, we did not make all the progress that we should have and intended to accomplish.”
Platt — the mother of actor and singer Ben Platt — also stressed that she would only serve as an interim chair, as her position as chair of the Board of Trustees for Jewish Federations of North America takes precedence.
“As chair of the Jewish Federation of North America, we are leading the largest mobilization in our history in support of Israel’s right to protect its citizens and against the rise of antisemitism in North America, including staging the largest Jewish rally in American history on the National Mall.
“We will continue this fight with all of our energy.”







