Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday faced threats from donors, demands that their presidents resign and a congressional investigation as repercussions mounted over the universities’ responses to antisemitism on campus.
At Penn, university trustees discussed the future of Elizabeth Magill, its president, whose congressional testimony Tuesday set off a furor when she dodged the question of whether she would discipline students for calling for the genocide of Jews.
Her answers and similar comments by Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of MIT at a House committee meeting set off accusations that they were doing little to protect their own students. All three said they had taken action against antisemitism, but critics argued they had not done enough or were even fostering antisemitism on their campuses.
In response, a House committee opened an investigation into the three institutions as its chair criticized the schools for failing to tackle the “rampant antisemitism” on their campuses after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who leads the Committee on Education and the Workforce, said the inquiry would examine “the learning environments” at Harvard, MIT and Penn, as well as disciplinary procedures. She warned that the panel would “not hesitate” to issue subpoenas.
“The disgusting targeting and harassment of Jewish students is not limited to these institutions, and other universities should expect investigations as well, as their litany of similar failures has not gone unnoticed,” Foxx said in a statement.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said all three presidents should leave their posts. “You cannot call for the genocide of Jews, the genocide of any group of people, and not say that that’s harassment,” she told Fox News.
And Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, denounced the university leaders at the National Menorah Lighting in Washington.
“Seeing the presidents of some of our most elite universities literally unable to denounce calling for the genocide of Jews as antisemitic — that lack of moral clarity is simply unacceptable,” said Emhoff, who is Jewish.
For Magill, pressure has been building within Penn’s community, too. The advisory board at Wharton, Penn’s business school, told Magill in a letter this week that “the university requires new leadership with immediate effect.”
And hedge fund manager Ross Stevens said he would pull back a donation, worth approximately $100 million, to fund the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance.
“Absent a change in leadership and values at Penn in the very near future,” he plans to rescind shares in Stone Ridge Holdings Group, he said in an email to his staff Thursday.
“Mr. Stevens and Stone Ridge are appalled by the university’s stance on antisemitism on campus,” lawyers for Stevens wrote in a separate letter to the university’s general counsel informing her of his decision.
During an emergency meeting by telephone Thursday, Penn’s board of trustees did not take a vote on whether to remove Magill, who had apologized earlier for her testimony. Instead, they pressed Magill and other leaders to express the university’s values with greater clarity. University officials did not respond to requests for interviews.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a nonvoting member of Penn’s board, said Thursday evening that he had urged the board to decide whether Magill’s testimony reflected the university’s values.
“I expect they’ll be meeting again in the coming days, and I expect them to carefully weigh that question,” he said, speaking to reporters after a visit to Penn Hillel, a Jewish campus group. “That’s a question for them to answer, not me.”
He said Jewish students at Hillel told him they did not feel support from the administration. Some of them said they did not feel supported by their professors, either, he said.
At MIT, the governing board issued a strong endorsement of Kornbluth’s leadership.
“She has done excellent work in leading our community, including in addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate,” the board said in a statement sent to all the university’s students, faculty and staff. “She has our full and unreserved support.”
Gay issued a clarification Wednesday: “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
But David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi, said the problems at Harvard ran deep and he resigned Thursday from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee, formed after the Oct. 7 attack.
In a social media post, Wolpe praised Gay as a “kind and thoughtful person” and said most students were not prosecuting an ideological agenda. But he said that antisemitism was so entrenched that he did not think he could make the kind of difference he had hoped for.
“Part of the problem is a simple herd mentality — people screaming slogans whose meaning and implication they know nothing of, or not wishing to be disliked by taking an unpopular position,” he wrote.