UPenn Board of Trustees hold 'emergency meeting' as president Elizabeth Magill faces calls to resign from donors and students after 'unacceptable' statements at congressional hearing

The University of Pennsylvania's Board of Trustees are holding an emergency meeting as president Elizabeth Magill faces calls to resign after her 'unacceptable' statements at a congressional hearing.

The hastily-arranged board meeting started at 9am and is being held virtually - following a percussive flood of calls, from students and donors alike, for the president of the Ivy League college to be sacked.

This is the latest sign of the mounting, intense pressure on Penn to remove their president, who told Congress that reprimanding students who call for a Jewish genocide was not paramount - instead, it's 'context' specific.

Magill, a lawyer by trade, smirked and smiled as she publicly refused to categorize calls for the genocide of Jews as harassment or a breach of the school's code of conduct. 

Scott L. Bok is the Chair of Penn's Board of Trustees. He is also the CEO of Greenhill & Co., a boutique investment bank in New York. 

The Vice Chair, who will also attend the meeting, is Jewish banker Julie Beren Platt.

She is a philanthropist who has also served as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Federations of North America since 2022 - which helps distribute $3 billion to non-profits each year. 

Beren Platt, who is now based in Los Angeles, graduated from Penn with a bachelor's degree in 1979. She is the mother to prominent Hollywood actor Ben Platt. 

In her charitable career, Beren Platt was once of the first people to sign the Jewish Future Pledge - which is a campaign encouraging Jewish people to give to good causes.    

Meanwhile, a petition calling for Magill's resignation has grown to more than 12,300 signatures by Thursday morning. 

Magill attempted to rectify the situation on Wednesday, by releasing a video message on Penn's social media. She stopped short of apologizing. 

In the video, she said she was not 'focused' on the issue, and said she wanted to 'be clear' that calls for genocide were 'evil, plain and simple' - although she said the blame lay with her university's policies and the constitution, rather than with her.

She said that as she sat with the presidents from MIT and Harvard, she was 'focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable.' 

Magill said Penn would evaluate and clarify the university’s policies on antisemitism.

During the shocking hearing, MIT's Sally Kornbluth and Harvard's Claudine Gay gave equally deplorable answers when quizzed about their colleges' code of conduct. 

All three colleges - considered the best academic institutions in the world - have witnessed a slew of unregulated anti-Israel protests since Hamas' October 7 attack.  

When Magill was nominated to take over as Penn's president in 2022, she ran on the ticket flexing her 'passionate commitment to academic excellence, diversity, equity, and inclusion.' 

She pledged to promote free speech at the Philadelphia institution. 

Part of that 'free speech,' it has transpired since Magill's astonishing words in front of Congress, includes the lack of discipline for Penn students who call for the genocide of the Jewish people. 

Magill has been an academic and visiting professor at the University of Virginia, Cambridge University in England, Harvard Law School, and Princeton University.

She started her education at Yale, completing a History degree in 1988.  

Before joining Penn, Magill was the Dean at Stanford Law School for seven years. Her legacy at the West Coast college was 'expanding and redesigning student life initiatives' with her 'strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion.'

Senator Bob Casey said in response to Magill's congressional appearance: 'President Magill's comments yesterday were offensive, but equally offensive was what she didn't say.

'The right to free speech is fundamental, but calling for the genocide of Jews is antisemitic and harassment, full stop.'

Senator John Fetterman also described the testimony as 'a significant fail.'

He wrote: 'There is no 'both sides-ism' and it isn't 'free speech,' it's simply hate speech. It was embarrassing for a venerable Pennsylvania university, and it should be reflexive for leaders to condemn antisemitism and stand up for the Jewish community or any community facing this kind of invective.'