Former Penn president Liz Magill will lead Georgetown’s law school
The move comes a little more than two years after Magill resigned from Penn following a bipartisan backlash over her testimony to a congressional committee about the campus’ handling of antisemitism.
Former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill has been named the new executive vice president and dean of Georgetown University’s law school in Washington, D.C.
The move comes a little more than two years after Magill resigned from Penn following a bipartisan backlash over her testimony to a congressional committee about the campus’ handling of antisemitism.
“I am honored to join Georgetown Law, one of this country’s great law schools, and the university, an exceptional and distinctive research institution,” Magill said in an announcement posted Friday on the Jesuit institution’s website.
» READ MORE: Penn president Liz Magill has resigned following backlash over her testimony about antisemitism
Magill did not immediately return a request for comment.
Magill, a lawyer and academic, previously served as dean of Stanford’s law school from 2012 to 2019 and had been executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia before joining Penn. She resigned from Penn in December 2023 — just 18 months after she started the job — but has remained a faculty member at Penn Carey Law.
She starts at Georgetown Aug. 1.
“Liz Magill brings the experience and leadership that we need to lead Georgetown Law,” Thomas A. Reynolds, chair of Georgetown’s board of directors, said in the school’s announcement. “Her ability to connect with others, her humility and her unwavering belief in higher education will make her an exceptional next dean.”
Three of Magill’s siblings have degrees from Georgetown Law School, the announcement noted.
Magill became Penn’s president July 1, 2022, following the record-setting 18-year tenure of Amy Gutmann. Tensions began to mount about a year into her tenure, and her departure from Penn followed a tumultuous semester, marked by near-weekly student protests and complaints from deep-pocketed donors over the school’s response to antisemitism following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023. There was also unrest over the school’s allowing the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to be held on campus in September of that year.
Then, during her congressional testimony, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) asked her about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Penn’s code of conduct. “It is a context-dependent decision,” Magill had answered.
Less than a week later, she stepped down. Scott L. Bok, then chair of the board of trustees, also resigned. And former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who also testified that day, resigned, too, less than a month later.
» READ MORE: Former Penn board chair Scott Bok and President Liz Magill discuss the upheaval that led to their resignations
“I provided this 30-second sound bite that went viral and just swamped everything else about what I’d said and my record at Penn,” Magill said last May when she and Bok talked about their experiences at the New York Public Library following the publication of Bok’s book that discussed the controversy. “And I really regret that. It hurt Penn. It hurt Penn’s reputation, and my job was to protect the institution that I led.”