On Saturday, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill stepped down after backlash from a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses last week.

What You Need To Know

  • More than 650 members of Harvard’s faculty signed a letter urging the school's board of directors not to remove university president Claudine Gay

  • The development comes one week after the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania testified at a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses

  • Responses from the three campus leaders to questioning about whether calls for the genocide of Jews violates their respective schools' conduct policy drew widespread criticism 

  • University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill stepped down on Saturday amid the backlash

Magill, as well as Harvard University President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, drew widespread condemnation for their responses to questions from New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik — herself a graduate of Harvard — about how they would discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews and whether that violates their respective schools' conduct policy.

“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, wrote on social media on Saturday, urging Harvard and MIT to “do the right thing.”

Dozens of lawmakers, as well as prominent alumni and donors, have called on Gay and Kornbluth to resign in the aftermath of last week’s hearing. Mark Gorenberg, the chair of the MIT Corp., wrote in an open letter last week that he and the group’s executive committee “entirely” back Kornbluth.

“The MIT Corporation chose Sally to be our president for her excellent academic leadership, her judgment, her integrity, her moral compass, and her ability to unite our community around MIT’s core values,” Gorenberg wrote. “She has done excellent work in leading our community, including in addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, all of which we reject utterly at MIT. She has our full and unreserved support.”

Gay apologized for her testimony in an interview with The Harvard Crimson, the school’s newspaper, last week, saying she “got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures.”

“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” she told the outlet.

“I am sorry,” Dr. Gay, the first Black woman to lead the school, said. “When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret.”

The Harvard Corp. and the school’s Board of Organizers met Sunday, though no immediate action was taken. According to The Crimson, the meeting was scheduled in advance; the groups were set to meet again Monday.

Also Monday, more than 650 members of Harvard’s faculty signed a letter to the corporation urging the officials “to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom,” including those calling for Gay’s removal.

“The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces,” the letter reads.

According to The Crimson, the letter was spearheaded by a group of faculty members, including Derek Penslar, a professor specializing in Jewish history who directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Notable signatories include constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, and Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and the the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

Meanwhile, the House Education Committee, which held last week’s hearing, announced it would be opening a probe into the three institutions.

“We will use our full Congressional authority to hold these schools accountable for their failure on the global stage,” Stefanik said in a statement announcing the investigation.