At Penn, Magill didn’t get the same support as Harvard’s president
Following their controversial congressional committee testimony this month on antisemitism, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — all relative newcomers to their jobs — faced calls for their resignation.
But, at least so far, only Penn’s Liz Magill is no longer in her leadership role.
One major difference at Harvard was a letter signed by more than 650 faculty calling on the university to keep Claudine Gay; its board announced last week that she would remain. A group of current and former MIT faculty leaders also issued a letter of support for their president, Sally Kornbluth, and the board of trustees there also backed her, according to the Washington Post.
But faculty at Penn wrote no such letter for Magill, a former University of Virginia provost and lawyer who had begun her tenure less than 18 months earlier.
Now, however, the faculty senate is circulating a letter to the board of trustees, already signed by more than 880 faculty members, that opposes “all attempts by trustees, donors, and other external actors to interfere with our academic policies and to undermine academic freedom.”
Here’s why more support for Magill didn’t materialize, according to interviews with a more than a half-dozen Penn faculty members.
Gay had longstanding ties to Harvard.
Gay, who earned her doctorate at Harvard, started on the faculty there in 2006, giving her 15 years to build ties. Harvard professor Gary King, her thesis mentor, publicly advocated for her, shooting down allegations that she plagiarized portions of her thesis.
Magill, by contrast, had just arrived at Penn on July 1, 2022.
“She barely had a chance to wipe her feet on the welcome mat and this blew up,” said Kathleen Brown, a history professor. “A lot of us really don’t know her.”
Problems at Penn were festering longer.
At Penn, problems started before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The Palestine Writes literature festival held on campus drew criti
cism from some for inviting speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks. That unleashed a backlash from donors that grew following the Hamas attack.
“What that did is supercharge all the emotions around Oct. 7 in ways that are greater than they were at Harvard and MIT,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a Penn professor of the history of education, who has ardently defended free speech.
Penn also experienced several antisemitic acts this semester, including the drawing of a swastika inside Meyerson Hall and vandalism at Penn Hillel. Complaints also surfaced after pro-Palestinian protest messages the university called antisemitic were projected on several Penn buildings, including Penn Commons, Huntsman Hall and Irvine Auditorium.
Meanwhile, a petition signed by more than 500 academics and writers from inside and outside the United States called on Penn to defend its students, faculty, and staff against targeted harassment for speaking in support of Palestinians.
What was needed, some faculty said, were statements acknowledging the abomination of the attack in Israel, while also acknowledging the poor treatment of Palestinians before and since the war in Gaza. Magill also needed to defend the university as a place where heated debate and controversial views are shared without fear of punishment and to take action only when that speech truly crosses into harassment or incitement to violence, faculty said.
But even if she had struck the right note, it’s unclear whether the outcome would have changed.
“One wonders if a more deft handling of the public statements after the Hamas attack would have made any difference for her, honestly,” Brown said.
The racial and religious identities of the presidents played a part.
In her testimony, Kornbluth noted that she is Jewish. Gay is Harvard’s first Black president. Magill is Penn’s first Catholic president, so says Zimmerman, who noted he confirmed that with a university archivist.
And those identities, he said, matter.
Accusing a Jewish president of antisemitism is different from accusing a Catholic president of it, he said. And more than 800 Black alumni penned a letter of support for Gay for her “commitment to fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism,” according to CNN. Black faculty also wrote a letter of support, in addition to the letter by faculty overall, according to the Washington Post.
“President Gay’s commitment to free speech and the safety and protection of all her students, as well as her leadership at Harvard as a Black woman, are critical and deserving of the opportunity to coalesce and take shape,” said the letter, posted on X, previously known as Twitter, and signed by “Concerned Black Alumni and Allies.”
“I do not think it’s a coincidence that the lone president who had to walk the plank was the white Catholic,” Zimmerman said.
The faculties at Harvard and MIT also had the benefit of seeing the fallout of Magill’s resignation, an ominous sign of what could happen on their campus if they didn’t act, several Penn faculty members pointed out. Faculty on those campuses penned their support letters after Magill’s resignation.
The divisions in faculty made a united response difficult.
In her first couple of statements, Magill referenced antisemitism but didn’t mention other types of hate, including Islamophobia, and that angered some faculty, they said. Others were upset over her response to antisemitism.
“At the end of the day, when the board turned against her, she basically was in a lonely place,” said Harun Kucuk, former director of Penn’s Middle East Center and associate professor of history and sociology of science.
Some faculty were relieved that Magill resigned. Adam Grant, a professor of psychology and management at Wharton, who has been consistently recognized as the business school’s top-rated professor, said on X that he appreciated she “took the right course” of action.
“No matter what title you have, once you’ve lost the trust of your followers, you can no longer be a leader,” he wrote.
But Magill probably had more support than was evident, said one faculty member who followed events closely, but asked not to be identified.
“There was a large silent majority, squeezed in the middle, who thought she was an inspiring and principled leader,” the faculty member said. “That silent majority, where I would include myself, was looking forward to Magill implementing the new [strategic plan], the result of a year of consultation with members of the community, and that highlighted climate change and democracy, as two priorities areas, for instance.”
But given the division, it would have been hard for the faculty leadership at Penn to put out a letter in support of Magill, the faculty member said.
“Some coordinated sectors were already against Magill for her early statements, others did not want to ignite more division among the faculty,” the faculty member explained.
“I wish the faculty had coordinated around a letter of support for Magill,” the faculty member added, “although realistically, [given Gov. Josh Shapiro’s criticism of Magill] … among others, I am not sure it would have made a difference.”
Kucuk said that, in retrospect, he thinks Magill probably would have gone on to be a fine president, and he blamed the problems on the board of trustees.
“I have criticized Magill,” he said. “A lot of other people have criticized Magill. But when you look at a lot of the actors on the other side of the curtain, you wonder if she could have done any better, if anyone could have done any better.”
But now, he said, it’s more important than ever for faculty to have a strong voice and advocate for shared governance.
Kucuk supports the faculty senate letter — which “unambiguously reject(s) the view that the Board of Trustees, the Schools’ Boards of Advisors, alumni, or donors should determine Penn’s academic priorities or governance — as the beginning of a stronger faculty voice. The letter was written after Marc Rowan, the billionaire donor who started the effort this fall to oust Magill from her job, in an email to trustees on Tuesday attempted to set the agenda for the board, questioning the university’s instruction, faculty hiring and political orientation.
The faculty handbook, the faculty letter says, makes clear that trustees delegate management of Penn to the president and “the decision-making process to the shared governance of faculty, staff, and students.”
“This letter from the faculty senate,” Kucuk said, “will create the foundation for future mobilization.”