National Review Online
Monday, December 11, 2023
Just four days after appearing before Congress,
where she waffled on the question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews
violated her university’s speech codes, M. Elizabeth Magill resigned from
her position as president of the University of Pennsylvania. She was joined by the chairman of the school’s board of
trustees, Scott Bok, who backed her.
Magill’s testimony was just one cracked reed in a
tone-deaf chamber performance by three university presidents. Asked a
direct moral question about whether genocidal rhetoric directed at Jews
amounted to bullying and harassment, Magill responded with lawyerly
qualifications and evasions. “If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is
harassment,” she said. “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” she
told Elise Stefanik.
Magill had lost sight of her own context. So steeped in a
rotten academic culture that views vulgar antisemitism as merely the forgivable
enthusiasm of good-hearted “anti-colonialist” activists, she went in front of
the American public and gave pseudo-academic cover to conspiracists and thugs
who thrive on intimidating Jews on her campus.
The testimony only worsened her already weakened position
at UPenn. Earlier this semester and during Jewish High Holy Days, UPenn held a
conference, Palestine Writes, which hosted speakers, such as Pink Floyd
co-founder Roger Waters, who are notorious for making antisemitic statements,
minimizing the Holocaust, and casting modern-day Jews as Nazis. It also hosted
Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN for advocating against “shaming”
Palestinians for “resisting” Israel, and called for a “free Palestine from the
river to the sea” — common code for the political destruction of the Jewish
state and the logical necessity entailed, the destruction of the Jewish people
living there. Leading up to the event, the school’s Jewish organization, Penn
Hillel, was vandalized with a swastika. Magill was caught between faculty and
students, who demanded she protect their radical playpen, and the rest of
public opinion that was turning sharply against a university that had been
previously well regarded.
Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor of Utah and former
alumnus and trustee of UPenn, withdrew his family’s longtime financial support
of the university. He would soon be joined by CEO of Apollo Global Management
Marc Rowan, AQR Capital Management’s Clifford Asness, and nearly a dozen other
luminaries. After Magill’s testimony, another donor, Ross Stevens, pulled a $100 million donation.
Some faculty claim to be frightened about what Magill’s
resignation portends for academic freedom. It’s hard not to laugh at such
pretensions. UPenn has been embroiled in a legal battle against law professor
Amy Wax. They tried to terminate the tenured Wax for her expressed views on
affirmative action, alleging that students lost confidence she would treat them
without bias. An extravagant investigation by the law-school dean found “no
evidence” Wax had ever mistreated a student and concluded with the investigator’s
“impression that it was the content and shape of her very controversial views
on matters of race, culture, matters of remedial justice, and related matters,
and her fearlessness in communicating these views . . . that was deeply
troubling to many alums.”
The combination of the jihad against Wax and the lawyerly
evasions regarding expressions of antisemitism demonstrate that the problem at
Penn isn’t just an insufficient commitment to free speech; it’s a nearly
universal, thoughtless, and degrading allegiance to left-wing fashion.
The resignation of Magill is appropriate, but the culture
that produced her is still, fundamentally, a sickened one. The founder of this
magazine began his career in public controversy by calling for an alumni revolt
against out-of-control academia. In 2023, the alumni won’t be enough. There is
no mechanism by which the “pendulum” will swing back to the center or the
right. Given the ideological capture of the institution and the sizeable
endowments that already exist in the elite-tier schools, along with the tax
privileges and federal subsidies that sluice through higher education, any
salutary cultural change on America’s campuses will only come about through
constant outside pressure.
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