University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, who came under fire for her stance on antisemitism on campus, has resigned, the Ivy League school said on Saturday.
Magill was one of three top university presidents who were criticized after they testified at a congressional hearing on Tuesday about a rise in antisemitism on college campuses following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
She has agreed to stay on until an interim president is appointed, Scott Bok, chair of the Philadelphia-based university's board of trustees, said on Saturday in a statement posted on the university's website. Bok also stepped down.
“I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania,” Bok said in the announcement released by the university. Magill will remain a tenured faculty member at the university's law school, Bok said.
Magill, Harvard University President Claudine Gay, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth testified before a US House of Representatives committee on Tuesday.
Calls for Magill's and Gay's resignations in particular mounted in the days after that testimony.
As they tried to walk a line that protected freedom of speech, they declined to give a definitive “yes” or “no” answer to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik's question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.
Jewish students, families and alumni have accused the schools of tolerating antisemitism, especially in statements by pro-Palestinian demonstrators since the Hamas Movement attacked Israel on Oct. 7. That attack prompted a massive counterattack by Israel that has left over 17,700 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Magill released a video on Wednesday in which she expressed regret, Gay apologized on Friday.
Stefanik said on social media site X that Magill's resignation was the “bare minimum of what is required” and urged Harvard and MIT to take similar action.
Antisemitism has risen sharply in the United States and elsewhere since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas.
