How Can an Ivy League College President Be So Stupid?

We reported, on Tuesday, how University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down, after The Philadelphia Inquirer noted her terrible performance before a congressional committee:

When given the chance, though, the presidents — Dr Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth — at times didn’t directly answer, struggling to explain the point at which hate speech rises to the level of incitement of violence — or, when students or faculty should be disciplined for it.

“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill said when asked repeatedly if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct.

What? If the question had been about calling for the killing of blacks or Hispanics or homosexuals, is there any doubt, any doubt at all, that Dr Magill’s answer would not have been that it was a “context-dependent decision”?

At least as of this writing, Dr Magill still has her job, but I wonder just for how much longer that will be:

Penn President Liz Magill is facing criticism from Gov. Shapiro, White House and others for comments at a congressional hearing on antisemitism

“President Magill repeatedly equivocated, refusing to characterize calls for the genocide of Jews as a breach of Penn’s code of conduct,” Hillel leaders wrote.

by Susan SnyderXimena Conde, and Joseph N. DiStefano | Wednesday, December 7, 2023 |  5:36 PM EST | Updated: 8:08 PM EST

Hours after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testified before a congressional committee about the campus’ plans to address antisemitism, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a White House spokesperson and the leaders of Penn Hillel were among those who expressed serious concern about aspects of her testimony.

Critics have pointed to Magill’s response when asked repeatedly if calling for genocide of Jewish people violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct. “It is a context-dependent decision,” she said.

“If that doesn’t violate the policies of Penn, well, there’s something wrong with the policies of Penn that the board needs to get on, or there’s a failure of leadership from the president, or both,” Shapiro said, speaking Wednesday at a press conference at Goldie, a falafel shop in the city, offering support to the business after it was singled out during a ceasefire march over the weekend.

Naturally, the University’s President is scrambling to save her job!

Magill Wednesday evening released a short video, saying she does view a call for genocide of Jewish people as harassment or intimidation and promising an evaluation of Penn policies.

“In that moment,” Magill, a lawyer, said of her testimony at the hearing, “I was focused on our university’s long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil—plain and simple.

“For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn’s policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today’s world, where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated.”

Yeah, uh huh, right! Dr Magill is an attorney, but not just any attorney. She worked as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1995 until 1996, and then worked as a clerk for left-wing United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 1996 until 1997. She then became a law professor at the University of Virginia, and later Vice Dean of the Law School there. She was then recruited to become Dean of Stanford University’s law school, then Provost back at UVa, before finally, in 2022, becoming President of the University of Pennsylvania. Yet she expects us to believe that she, and Presidents Gay and Kornbluth as well, got tripped up by that simple question, a question that the lowest ranking law school student at UVa would not have messed up answering?

There’s a lot more at the original, including the fact that it wasn’t just Dr Magill:

(Rep Elise M Stefanik (R-NY)) asked the same question of Harvard president Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, who both used the word “context” when answering whether they thought calling for the genocide of Jewish people constituted bullying or harassment.

In other words, the three college presidents put their heads together before the committee hearing and came up with a coordinated answer, a coordinated stupid answer, to a question they thought would be asked. The Inquirer article doesn’t say that, but I will.

I do not know that Dr Magill will resign, but another shoe has dropped, one that no politician can control:

Dave Portnoy vows not to hire from Harvard, MIT and Penn after presidents’ congressional testimony: ‘Unacceptable on every single level’

By Michael Blinn | Wednesday, December 6, 2023 | 7:00 PM EST

Dave Portnoy has narrowed down his hiring pool.

The Barstool Sports head vowed this week to not hire applicants from Harvard, MIT and Penn after seeing congressional testimony from the schools’ presidents after they offered excuses and cited free speech amid antisemitic demonstrations on their campuses.

“This video has made me so irate I need to make sure as many people see it as possible,” the 46-year-old wrote on Instagram.

“The Deans of 3 supposedly prestigious Universities in the United States somehow refusing to condemn students calling for the Genocide of Jews on campus. AKA – the murder of all Jews. Newsflash that is calling for the murder of myself, my parents and my entire family. And these ‘leaders’ refuse to condemn this as hate speech on their campuses?

“This isn’t debating whether there should be a cease fire or discussing the future of Israel and Palestine in the Middle East. This is calling for the MURDER OF ALL JEWS everywhere and these absolute coward school administrators refuse to condemn it.”

This is really huge. Despite its state-school-sounding name, the University of Pennsylvania is not a public institution, but a private, Ivy League college with listed tuition and fees cost, not including housing, of $73,494 per academic year. Who is going to want to matriculate at Penn, for that kind of money, if corporations are going to blacklist hiring graduates from that college?

Governor Josh Shapiro stated that he would wait to see what Penn’s Board of Trustees did as far as President Magill is concerned before he “determine(d) (his) nest steps.” Yeah, the handwriting is on the wall, in big, spray painted graffiti. It’s one thing to say something completely, dumb as a box of rocks stupid, but when what you’ve said threatens admissions, that’s it, you’re toast.
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