update deskSchools & Higher Education

Harvard, London School of Economics offer positions to embattled former Penn president Liz Magill

Universities should not “hire faculty with a track record of turning a blind eye to discrimination and harassment,” Rep. Jason Smith stated.

From left: Claudine Gay (Harvard University president), Elizabeth Magill (University of Pennsylvania president), American University professor Pamela Nadell and Sally Kornbluth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology president) testify during a House committee hearing about antisemitism on campus on Dec. 5, 2023. Source: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
From left: Claudine Gay (Harvard University president), Elizabeth Magill (University of Pennsylvania president), American University professor Pamela Nadell and Sally Kornbluth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology president) testify during a House committee hearing about antisemitism on campus on Dec. 5, 2023. Source: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Liz Magill, the embattled former president of the University of Pennsylvania who testified before Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews wouldn’t necessarily violate the school’s code of conduct, has secured unpaid positions at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, according to her résumé on the Penn website.

Magill is serving as a visiting senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession this fall and will be a visiting professor at the London School of Economics Law School from 2024 to 2027, per the CV, which was updated this summer. She also remains a tenured law professor at Penn.

The school’s student paper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, reported on the updated resume. Citing “a source close to the former Penn president,” the student paper reported that she “will not be teaching, and both opportunities are temporary, unpaid and research focused.”

“Last week, Virginia Foxx and I sent a letter to Harvard, along with other universities, demanding a plan as to how they will protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment as students return to campus,” wrote Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.). 

“This week, we learned that Harvard has decided to hire Liz Magill, the former president of UPenn who resigned after she failed to appropriately respond to and condemn antisemitism on UPenn’s campus,” Smith added. “Universities need to do more (to) protect their Jewish students, not hire faculty with a track record of turning a blind eye to discrimination and harassment.”

“In her role as president, Liz Magill enabled the worst spike in antisemitism in UPenn’s history,” wrote the Combat Antisemitism Movement. “Infamously, she refused to condemn calls of genocide against Jews. So why is Harvard now hiring her?”

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