University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill announced her decision to voluntarily resign on December 9 local time, after she was criticized for failing to effectively respond to antisemitic rhetoric on campus, a decision that drew widespread attention. Anti-Semitic sentiment on U.S. college campuses has been on the rise since Oct. 7, prompting the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Workforce Committee to launch an investigation into Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At a congressional hearing on December 5, Penn President Magill, Harvard President Claudinegay, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth were questioned by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik about whether genocide of Jews violated the school's code of conduct. The three principals have come under fire for refusing to give a clear answer, sparking particularly strong calls for Majill and Guy to resign. In this context, Magill apologized in a paragraph, while Guy apologized on the 8th.
Subsequently, Penn Board Chair Scott Bok announced in an open letter that President Magill had voluntarily resigned as Penn president but would remain on the tenured faculty of Penn Carey Law School. Magill has agreed to remain in office until an interim principal is appointed. After Magill announced his resignation, Stefanik said on social **, "Down one, there are two left." She dismissed Magill's resignation as a "minimum requirement" and urged Harvard and MIT to take similar action. Since October, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise sharply in the United States and elsewhere.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish non-** organization based in New York, USA, anti-Semitic incidents in the United States have risen by about 400% in the two weeks since Hamas's attack on Israel. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said this week that in the two months since the Israeli-Kazakh war began, the number of incidents motivated by Islamophobia and prejudice against Palestinians and Arabs has increased by 172 percent compared with the same period last year. This data is deeply worrying and underscores the seriousness of the problem of xenophobia and prejudice against the Islamic community.
In an interview with CNN, Eyal Jacoby, a student at the University of Pennsylvania who has sued the university for its inadequacy with antisemitism, said Magill's resignation marked a step toward broader change at the university. "This is the result of the hard work that I have personally put in and many alumni, classmates, and parents for a period of time...[But] this is just the first domino in the culture of many leaders, including Chairman Bock, and is part of them allowing this to happen." "This change is happening as an important response to the phenomenon of discrimination and prejudice on campus, and underscores an urgent call for social inclusion and fairness.