Stefanik celebrates UPenn president’s resignation after targeting university heads

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) celebrated the resignation of University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) President Liz Magill on Saturday after demanding she be removed amid controversial statements on campus antisemitism.

“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America.”

At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Magill and other university leaders controversially said that it would depend on context whether comments calling for the genocide of Jewish people would be considered harassment.

Those statements brought Magill under fire from university alumni and Pennsylvania politicians, some of whom called on her to resign or be removed from the role.

On Friday, Stefanik said all three university leaders at the hearing — Magill plus the presidents of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — should be ousted from their jobs.

“This lack of moral clarity is shocking. If only it were surprising,” she wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “In the months since Oct. 7, the mainstreaming of anti-Jewish hate has been on full display at the poisoned Ivy League and other so-called elite schools, as has the gutless lack of response from university leaders.”

The comments from Magill and the other college leaders received bipartisan criticism. 

Just after Magill resigned Saturday, the university’s board of trustees Chair Scott Bok did as well, also citing her comments.

Bok described Magill’s comments as “a very unfortunate misstep … after five hours of aggressive questioning before a Congressional committee.”

“Worn down by months of relentless external attacks, she was not herself last Tuesday,” he said. “Over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong.” 

“It made for a dreadful 30-second sound bite in what was more than five hours of testimony,” he added.