University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has promised to review the university’s code of conduct after she faced calls to resign for declining to say whether advocating genocide was a violation of the policy, Reuters reports.
Penn students and alumni stepped up calls for Magill to step down after she declined to say outright during a congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate Penn’s code of conduct.
In a video statement posted online, Magill said she should have focused more on the “evil” of advocating genocide instead of framing the matter as an issue of free speech in line with the US Constitution and the traditions of on-campus debate. “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation,” she added.
Magill said she and Provost John Jackson would begin a process to evaluate and clarify campus policy, saying, “We can and will get this right.”
An online petition demanding the university’s Board of Trustees accept Magill’s resignation due to her “inability to unequivocally condemn calls for the genocide of Jewish students and inability to identify these as harassment” had 2,500 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
