With backdrop of donor withdrawals and student protests, Penn president vows to regain trust of alumni

During an impassioned speech to the board of trustees Friday, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill said she regretted that anyone in the community doubted her position on antisemitism and vowed to regain the trust of alumni and bring the campus together.

“I hope, with time and progress on our goals, that they will once again engage with Penn,” Magill said during the nearly eight-minute speech, which drew a standing ovation from the board and university staff who filled the room. “And I will work tirelessly to regain that trust.”

Magill’s comments came as fallout continues from her early statements about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the Palestine Writes literary festival that was held on campus in September. The festival drew controversy for including speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks, and donors continue to declare they’re withdrawing financial support from the university because of her handling.

» READ MORE: Under pressure from Jewish community, Penn president unveils plan to combat antisemitism

Some have called for new university leadership, but the board has continued to express confidence in Magill, who is in her second year as Penn’s president. An attempt to oust Scott L. Bok as board chair also failed.

Bok, chairman and chief executive officer of Greenhill & Co. Inc., an independent investment bank, announced during the meeting that one nonvoting emeritus trustee and two trustees on the 40-plus-member board wrote to the board’s executive committee last week, asking that he be replaced as chair. Later, one of the trustees sent a letter to the entire board.

The board’s secretary polled members and none but the two who made the original proposal wanted him replaced, he said. The secretary also conducted a poll of the emeritus trustees, and “an overwhelming majority” of them also supported his continued leadership, he said.

“Given the lack of any meaningful support for consideration of the proposal,” Bok said, it was not added to the agenda.

» READ MORE: Critics in an uproar over speakers at this weekend’s Palestine Writes literature festival held at Penn

While university officials have said it’s too soon to gauge the impact of the donor backlash on Penn’s operations, Magill’s speech underscored the challenges facing the Ivy League institution as it works to rebound from the alumni unrest and deep division on its own campus, with some “sharing light and reaching for unity” and others “sowing fear and stoking division,” she said.

“Our Jewish community is afraid,” she said. “Our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities feel unseen and unheard. I condemn the death threats and doxing that many at Penn are experiencing based only on their identity, their affiliations, or their views of the suffering in this war.

“This is a dark and difficult time for the world,” Magill said. “And it is a dark and difficult time for Penn.”

Before the board meeting held at the Inn at Penn, a group of about 30 students stood outside, calling on the university to do a better job of supporting its Palestinian students and community.

“Step up or step aside,” Penn graduate Gigi Varlotta called out. “If you can’t support your community and your students, leave. We don’t want that.”

It was among a number of protests held on campus in recent weeks, some in support of Palestinians and others in support of Israel.

There have been three antisemitic incidents at Penn this semester, most recently “The Jews R Nazis” was written on a building next to the chapter house of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity; Penn police are investigating, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper.

The headquarters of Penn Hillel, a group for Jewish students, also was vandalized days before Yom Kippur in September by a man shouting antisemitic slurs, and a swastika was painted in an academic building.

Several donors, including Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor of Utah and former U.S. ambassador; and Marc Rowan, a Wharton graduate and CEO of Apollo Global Management, have said they no longer will give to the university. Charter school head Vahan H. Gureghian also resigned from the board of trustees, accusing school leaders of having “a broken moral compass.”

The latest donors to say they were withdrawing support are alumnus Stephen Levin, who has a building named after him on campus, and Wharton graduate Lynne Tarnopol, cofounder of the Penn Club of New York, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Magill has acknowledged that the university should have moved faster in expressing opposition to some of the speakers at the festival. She also in prior statements condemned the attack on Israel and called it a “terrorist assault.” Her earlier statement about the attacks did not use the word terrorism.

Earlier this week, Magill released an action plan to combat antisemitism on campus, including the establishment of a task force and a student advisory group to focus on the “Jewish student experience” there. The university also is establishing a presidential commission to look at the “interconnectedness of antisemitism and other forms of hate, including Islamophobia,” the school announced.

Rowan, one of the donors, was not impressed with the new plan, while Gureghian, the trustee who resigned, called the plan a good first step, but still called for new leadership.

“It is difficult to fully convey how sickened, and how horrified, and how angry I am,” Magill said at the meeting. “I condemn personally these hateful — hateful — antisemitic acts and words, which are nothing but inhumane. And I assure you that Penn has and will investigate any act of hate on our campus and take full action in accordance with our policies and our laws.”

She acknowledged that some believed she didn’t express these views clearly enough early on.

“This left room for doubt — doubt about my convictions, what our university believes, and how Penn moves forward from this,” she said. “I regret that, and I am listening.”

Trustee Perry Golkin, who is moving into an emeritus trustee role, used his parting speech to sound support for Magill and express confidence that Penn would steer through the difficult time.

“At Penn we learn, we adjust, we get better,” said Golkin, chief executive officer of PPC Enterprises, a private equity firm. “ … Let’s give President Magill an opportunity to focus on her demanding job of running this large complex organization and partner with her and university leadership to help us learn, adjust and make Penn even better.”

The university, Magill pledged, will immediately take action against any violence or incitement to violence, she said. It has strengthened security across campus and specifically at places where Jewish and Muslim students gather and worship.

She also pledged to continue to defend free speech on campus.

“Those in positions of leadership must not act as censors,” she said “Our duty is to ensure that our faculty and student scholars have freedom and security to pursue academic discourse unthreatened.”

Magill called on the entire Penn community to help find common ground and support one another.

“To move forward and to uphold our academic mission, we must stand together as a community,” she said, “a community that condemns hate and finds ways to respectfully debate and talk across difference.

“I care about Penn, our people, and our noble missions,” she said. “That’s what I’m fighting for, and it is my sincerest hope that, even when we disagree, everyone who loves Penn will join the effort.”