Leah touched upon this for VIP, but it’s worth repeating. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill faces a massive backlash for her appalling testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week. Magill, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT head Sally Kornbluth, all refused to condemn or say that calls for genocide against Jewish people constituted harassment. They went the academic route of trying to contextualize the subject, which did not go over well. This isn’t an academic subject: people calling for an entire race or ethnic group to be annihilated isn’t a tough call.
Magill immediately went into crisis mode, releasing a video hours later where she, reading from notecards, attempted to clean up her mess. Have you noticed what was missing from the two-minute video? It’s the rather conspicuous lack of an apology. Yes, in most cases, you should apologize, never apologize, or cave to the mob, but that’s over matters of free speech, expression, and offering a different political opinion. Genocide is not a legitimate political opinion. Is it free speech? Sure, but it is usually accompanied by violence or physical altercations, as we’ve seen in various videos. As the president of an Ivy League institution, there are higher standards, no? Magill knew the correct answer and refused. That’s her call, and she might lose her job over it. What we’re seeing with this surge in antisemitic activity is merely recycled Nazi propaganda with an Islamic face.
And why should she if her faculty are all about enabling terrorists and promoting antisemitic tropes:
Magill has already cost the school a $100 million donation. The board of trustees has held emergency meetings to decide the best action in the wake of this public relations fiasco. As of now, they want her to resign.
