Liz Magill — the president of the University of Pennsylvania — is stepping down after equivocating over the “genocide of Jews” and whether calling for that violated their rules.
The announcement over Magill’s resignation came down Saturday straight from Penn itself — with a statement from a member of the Board of Trustees reading … “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania. She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law.”
This follows a turbulent week on Capitol Hill, where Magill and two other presidents of Ivy League universities — namely, Harvard and MIT — were grilled by lawmakers over the rise in antisemitism on college campuses after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
When asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican, if calling for the genocide of Jews, in and of itself, violated Penn’s rules or code of conduct … Magill gave a qualifying answer instead of just saying yes or no — essentially explaining that it depended on the context.
Magill went on to say if the speech Stefanik referred to turned into actual action, it could then potentially constitute harassment. Stefanik gave her yet another opportunity to answer more directly — again, over whether calling for the genocide of Jews was a rule-breaker — and Magill kept giving conditional responses … which turned into a testy exchange.
That all went viral, and Magill later apologized in a video posted to Penn’s social media pages — where she was much more clear … yes, calling for the genocide of Jews is obviously in violation of the university’s policies — something she should’ve just said up front.
Just about everyone was stunned that Magill wouldn’t just acknowledge that what Stefanik was (literally) asking was terrible and not in line with the university’s values — even if there’s nuanced context to what exactly university students are saying/protesting for on campus.
We got into this issue further with a MIT free speech advocate … who gave us a puzzling response to whether the KKK calling for the genocide of African-Americans on a college campus would be met with the same kind of response as calling for the genocide of Jews.
Apparently, it’d be dealt with differently … but the reasons for why are still unclear, it seems.
Of course, this all stems from the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas — which has thrust innocent people into the mix … and has spurred a lot of people across the country to hit the streets to voice support … mostly for Palestine. A lot of that rhetoric though — namely, criticizing Zionism — has been viewed as outright antisemitic hate speech by some.
As with everything … it’s all case by case, and specificity matters. With that said, it should go without saying … calling for the genocide of any group of people is absolutely wrong.
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