Exciting Penn developments over Shabbat
2023-Dec-10, Sunday 11:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Penn President Liz Magill to resign amid backlash over antisemitism controversies.
The first Penn president to resign for reasons not involving government appointment, apparently.
I watched the testimony she gave in front of Congress and sure, Elise Stefanik was grandstanding to a conservative audience because she wants to be the next Marjorie Taylor Greene, but the reason the question got such a visceral reaction is that everyone knew Magill's answer was weasel words. As opposed as I am to the idea of advocating for my death, you could come at it from a free speech maximalist position and say, "While I personally find the idea of advocating for Jewish genocide abhorrent, academic freedom requires that individuals be allowed to express unpopular ideas so that those ideas can be refuted in reasoned debate" or something like it.
She didn't say that, of course. She said "It depends on context," the probably most universally-hated answer in the world, and then made herself look a lot worse when she said, "if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment," which, well, we're talking about genocide here. It's nice to know that if someone turns calls for genocide into action, Penn will at last step in.
(You can argue whether "intifada revolution" is a call for genocide or not, but under the Impact vs Intention model, many Jews absolutely experience it as that)
One of the major points of a president is to provide university leadership and to encourage donations, even for universities that have as gigantic an endowment as Penn, so when I saw that a $100 million donation was being withdrawn, I knew her days were numbered. And there's also a reasonable debate to be had about the influence of capitalism on university administration even for universities with enormous operating endowments--Penn's endowment is currently $21 billion.
Personally, especially after listening to some Jewish Penn students talk about things they went through, I'm glad she's gone. We'll see if it changes anything.
The first Penn president to resign for reasons not involving government appointment, apparently.
I watched the testimony she gave in front of Congress and sure, Elise Stefanik was grandstanding to a conservative audience because she wants to be the next Marjorie Taylor Greene, but the reason the question got such a visceral reaction is that everyone knew Magill's answer was weasel words. As opposed as I am to the idea of advocating for my death, you could come at it from a free speech maximalist position and say, "While I personally find the idea of advocating for Jewish genocide abhorrent, academic freedom requires that individuals be allowed to express unpopular ideas so that those ideas can be refuted in reasoned debate" or something like it.
She didn't say that, of course. She said "It depends on context," the probably most universally-hated answer in the world, and then made herself look a lot worse when she said, "if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment," which, well, we're talking about genocide here. It's nice to know that if someone turns calls for genocide into action, Penn will at last step in.
(You can argue whether "intifada revolution" is a call for genocide or not, but under the Impact vs Intention model, many Jews absolutely experience it as that)
One of the major points of a president is to provide university leadership and to encourage donations, even for universities that have as gigantic an endowment as Penn, so when I saw that a $100 million donation was being withdrawn, I knew her days were numbered. And there's also a reasonable debate to be had about the influence of capitalism on university administration even for universities with enormous operating endowments--Penn's endowment is currently $21 billion.
Personally, especially after listening to some Jewish Penn students talk about things they went through, I'm glad she's gone. We'll see if it changes anything.