Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony. December 8,2023.
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school’s president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was “appalled” Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton – the university’s business school – has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down “with immediate effect”.
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said – in varying ways – that it depended on the “context”.
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
“The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable,” Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: “I have clear grounds to rescind Penn’s $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill.”
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its “permissive approach” to those calling for violence against Jewish people “would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge”.
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
GETTY IMAGESImage caption,
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony.
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university’s website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the “university’s long-standing policies – aligned with the US Constitution – which say that speech alone is not punishable”.
She added she should have been focused on the “irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate”, adding that it is “evil, plain and simple”.
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens’ letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision “if, and when, there is a new University President in place”.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over “rampant antisemitism”.
“Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law,” the committee’s chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students – both of whom are Jewish – filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become “an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination.”
The lawsuit also accuses the school of “selectively” enforcing rules of conduct “to avoid protecting Jewish students” and hiring “rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence”.
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The heads of three top US colleges have pushed back against claims that they are not doing enough to combat antisemitism on their campuses.
The leaders, who included Harvard president Claudine Gay, testified before the House of Representatives.
The students at the universities have accused administrators of not protecting Jewish people since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Jewish students said they faced antisemitic threats, assault and more.
In testimony to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Professor Gay acknowledged a rising tide of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus since 7 October, when Hamas attacked Israel, which responded with a bombardment of Gaza and ground offensive.
She said it has been a challenge to balance freedom of speech and protest on campus while also protecting students against hate.
“This is difficult work. And I know that I have not always gotten it right,” Prof Gay said.
She testified alongside two other presidents of elite American colleges: University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth.
They were called to testify before Congress by Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the committee, after some House members accused the universities of “mishandling antisemitic, violent” protests on their campuses.
The US Department of Education said in November it had opened an investigation into antisemitism allegations at Harvard. Similar inquiries have been opened recently at other colleges as well.
Prof Gay told lawmakers her campus had taken steps to combat antisemitism recently. She noted they had beefed up security, denounced Hamas’ attack and reiterated that the school will not tolerate “speech that incites violence, threatens safety, or violates Harvard’s policies”.
Ms Foxx said these efforts were not enough and accused college administrators of standing by and “allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow” during the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
US college students have held frequent pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations on college campuses since the start of the war, and some incidents at the protests have raised allegations of antisemitism.
Pro-Palestinian rally organisers on college campuses have regularly denied this. They claim they are only calling for an end to violence and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
But a recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hillel International, both Jewish advocacy groups, found that nearly 75% of Jewish college students have experienced some form of antisemitism this school year.
Before the presidents’ testimonies, several Jewish students appeared at a press conference hosted by House Republicans to share their own experiences of such discrimination.
Eyal Yakoby, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, described incidents in which Jewish groups received threatening and antisemitic emails, and another in which a swastika was spray painted in an academic building.
“Why doesn’t the university hold the perpetrators of such acts accountable?” said Mr Yakoby, who told reporters that Jewish students felt unsafe on campus.
Some Muslim and pro-Palestinian students at Harvard, meanwhile, have been doxxed since the start of the war. They have had their names and photographs published under the headline “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites”.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has also reported a sharp rise in complaints of bias incidents against Muslim people in the US since the war began.
On Tuesday, the Republican-majority House also passed a resolution to condemn the “drastic rise of antisemitism” in the US and around the world following 7 October.
The resolution also stated that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”.
Some Jewish Democrats in the House, including New York congressmen Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, said the resolution was an “unserious attempt by Republicans to weaponize Jewish pain”.
It passed with every Republican vote except one. Thirteen Democrats voted against the resolution, while others voted “present”.
