Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
The inability of three Ivy League university presidents to speak unequivocally about campus anti-semitism has cost one of them her job and could cost her institution $100 million. Elizabeth Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday after failing to answer “yes” to a question at a congressional hearing last week. The question was whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted bullying or harassment under campus codes of conduct or harassment policies. Neither Magill, nor Claudine Gay of Harvard, nor Sally Kornbluth of MIT could give a straight answer.
Their pleas that the response had to be “context-dependent” went viral. Ross Stevens, a UPenn graduate, threatened to withdraw a planned $100 million donation to his alma mater. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and Harvard graduate, arranged a screening there of harrowing footage of the atrocities of 7 October, to which he invited Gay (she didn’t attend). The FT reports that Ackman and another Wall Street name, Mark Rowan, had already been manoeuvering for Magill’s removal before the congressional hearing. The debate on free speech and antisemitism on US campuses has reached fever pitch. The debate on big donors’ influence on universities isn’t much less tense.