Inside the chaotic struggle for power at Penn
Wealthy donors, alumni pull trustees’ strings
The dissident trustees of the University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees had decided to meet in secret over the weekend.
They had spent months watching support for Penn’s president erode as pro-Palestinian students demonstrated on campus, donors threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars, and the advisory board of Penn’s influential business school demanded that the university change its leadership.
Through it all, president M. Elizabeth Magill had kept the support of Scott Bok, chair of Penn’s board. But by Saturday, four days after her disastrous appearance on Capitol Hill, about two dozen trustees, half of the 48 voting members, came to a consensus: Magill had to go.
They did not know that Magill had reached the same conclusion. She had been working quietly with Bok to plan her exit. Before the trustees could force the issue, Magill resigned, ending the shortest tenure of any Penn president since the job’s creation in 1930.
But Magill, who took office last year, had been wobbling before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Influential donors seethed over her choice to allow a Palestinian literary conference to meet on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia, including speakers who had been accused of antisemitism.
Then last Tuesday’s hearing propelled Magill’s presidency into the spotlight, her cautious answers dissected and condemned around the world.
Still relatively new to Penn, she did not have enough deep alliances at the school to allow her to retain power. Deepening the turmoil, Penn’s sprawling board, enormous by the standards of many universities, split into factions. Public officials from both parties pummeled Penn’s leader. And donors, among the most crucial constituencies at a private university, waged an intense campaign to drive Magill and Bok from power.
Interviews with more than a dozen people who have inside knowledge of the university’s deliberations — most of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations — revealed a stark landscape. One of the country’s most prestigious universities — led by billionaires, executives, lawyers, and academics — felt broken and divided, undone by rivalries, power struggles, and arguments over what higher education should be.
Magill had come to Penn as an expert on constitutional law and a veteran of academia. She had been a clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a congressional aide, dean of Stanford Law School, and the University of Virginia’s provost.
But that experience was quickly tested in August, when Jewish groups voiced concerns about a Palestinian literary festival planned for the following month on Penn’s campus.
Magill; the provost, John Jackson Jr.; and the dean of Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, Steven Fluharty, said that they, too, had concerns about the program. They noted that it included speakers “who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people.”
But they did not stop the gathering.
“We unequivocally — and emphatically — condemn antisemitism,” the three administrators declared in mid-September. At the same time, they wrote, “As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”
That dispute might have faded, but about two weeks later, Hamas mounted its assault on Israel. Marc Rowan, a billionaire and an alumnus of Wharton, Penn’s business school, launched a campaign, curbing his contributions and beseeching other donors to do the same. Rowan also chaired the advisory board of Wharton.
Rowan’s campaign quickly drew support. Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor whose family had given tens of millions of dollars to Penn, said in an email to Magill that his family foundation would end its giving to an institution he said had become “almost unrecognizable.” Dick Wolf, creator of the “Law & Order” television franchise, joined in, too.
Magill had deep board support. But Rowan, known on Wall Street for hardball tactics, began to send trustees a protest email every day — numbered for emphasis. And he turned Wharton’s advisory board into an alternative center of power at Penn, even if at times some of its members questioned his aggressive tactics.
Beginning on Nov. 16, the Wharton board met to discuss university leadership at least nine times over about three weeks. The advisory board prepared a series of draft resolutions regarding conduct on campus and leadership of the university. Their proposal included speech codes requiring students and faculty to not “engage in hate speech, whether veiled or explicit, that incites violence.”
On Nov. 28, Magill attended a virtual meeting with roughly half of the Wharton board.
Board members offered what they considered an olive branch: They understood that it would take time to change the conduct code, but they asked for her public support for some of their ideas, including proposals for outlining standards of behavior. Magill would not agree.
That day, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced that Magill would be heading to Washington to testify at a hearing. She would be joined, the committee said, by Harvard president Claudine Gay and MIT president Sally Kornbluth.
Penn leaders recognized the perils of a public hearing, so they turned to WilmerHale, a prestigious law firm, to help Magill prepare.
On Tuesday, sitting before a panel of lawmakers in the Rayburn House Office Building, Magill swiftly declared there was “no justification, none,” for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and she described antisemitism as “an old, viral and pernicious evil.”
Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, zeroed in on speech. She said there had been marches where students had chanted in support of intifada, which means uprising but can feel to many Jews like a call for violence against them.
“Calling for the genocide of Jews,” Stefanik asked Magill, “does that constitute bullying or harassment?”
The Penn president replied, “If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.”
“So the answer is yes?” Stefanik retorted.
Magill, her voice careful, said, “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.”
Stefanik did not disguise her disgust: “That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context?”
To Magill’s detractors in Penn’s orbit, particularly on the Wharton board, it was a public display of what they had heard from the president in private.
After the hearing, the Wharton board resolved to seek her resignation.
The board, and the situation, seemed increasingly ungovernable. In meetings, people began to sketch out an exit plan to bring Penn toward what a person familiar with the discussions described as “some non-embarrassing conclusion.”
The plan was to announce Magill’s resignation as president the following week. She would remain in her tenured post in the law school.
Other trustees were drawing up their own plans, searching for ways to force a vote and stanch a controversy that was damaging Penn’s brand with every passing hour.
On Saturday, the dissidents, who by then had reached a majority of the board, convened without Magill or Bok.
Word filtered back to Bok and Magill that a measure of mutiny was coming.
Late in the afternoon, the board was summoned to a virtual meeting.
The mood was somber. Bok confirmed that Magill had quit. Then he informed them that he would quit as chair. According to someone in the meeting, he said, “I wish you all the best. It’s been an honor to serve.”
He clicked away from the meeting, leaving a shell-shocked board behind.