(RightWing.org) – For years, Conservatives have worried that America’s universities have become breeding grounds for far-left hatred and extremism. Now that’s been chillingly demonstrated in Congress after no less than THREE university presidents couldn’t bring themselves to condemn calls for a new Holocaust. There’s hope, though; one of them has just been brought back to earth with a hard bump.
On December 5, the presidents of Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University (UPenn) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appeared at a congressional hearing to give testimony on campus anti-Semitism. During the hearing, an increasingly stunned Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly asked each of the three to confirm that calling for the genocide of the Jews would violate their college’s policies. Incredibly, not one of them said it would. Even when Stefanik pressed them, asking for a clear yes or no answer, they dodged, waffled, and, in the case of UPenn president Liz Magill, smiled smugly.
Magill isn’t smiling anymore. The day after the disastrous hearing she released an apology on the university’s website, claiming she hadn’t been “focused” and insisting that she saw calls for genocide as “evil, plain and simple.” She tried to shift responsibility to the college’s policies and the First Amendment, before saying calls for genocide would be harassment or intimidation — exactly what Stefanik had tried to drag out of her the day before.
So, did Macgill lie awake the night after the hearing, thinking back on what she’d said and realizing she came across as a condescending, anti-Semitic monster? It’s possible. Of course, it’s also possible that the firestorm she walked into on Wednesday had something to do with it.
The board of UPenn’s Wharton Business School has written to her, demanding her immediate resignation. A petition calling for her to go already has more than 23,000 signatures. Worst of all for her, businessman Ross Stevens, a major donor who gifted $100 million to the university in 2017, wants his money back. He’s left the university a way out, though; in his letter he said he’s willing to review his decision “if, and when, there is a new university president in place.” The message to UPenn is clear — lose the money, or lose Macgill.
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