Liz Magill - what a putz!

One of my alma maters, University of Pennsylvania, has recently found itself in hot water.  The President of the University sponsored a bunch of Palestinian antisemites to speak at a major arts event some weeks ago and has turned a blind eye to a variety of continuing antisemitic activities by Hamas supporters on campus since October 7th.

The President of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, has been scrambling to demonstrate an iota of leadership, integrity or moral consistency.  Having cultivated the viper of antisemitism, she has been markedly reluctant to deal with it.  Dialogue with it - Yes.  Cultural respect for it - Yes.  Equal-handedness - Yes.  But deal with it as it needs to be dealt with?  Not so much.  She just can't bring herself to acknowledge that antisemitism is an evil to be eradicated not a condition to be understood and tolerated.

And her latest missive, after weeks and immense efforts, has brought forth a mouse.  

She should go.  

The university as an institution deserves a real leader.  The nation deserves to see someone deal with evil as it needs to be addressed.  Not some on-the-one-hand-but-then-on-the-other-hand bureaucrat terrified of offending  anyone's feelings.

From her November 1 letter.  In virtually every paragraph, she manages to strike just the wrong note.  

But this is more than a matter of ineffective communication given that the resources of a $4.4 billion operating budget institution.  This is a matter of failed leadership and failed morality.

 

Oh good.  A plan.  Founded on an equivalency of all hatreds.  Hamas inflicts 1,400 brutal murders on civilians, Hamas supporters cheer the carnage on campus and then harrass and threaten Jews in America on the University of Pennsylvania campus under the eyes of and apparent auspices of the University President.  And her response is to launch a plan to study how to combat antisemitism as well as, yeah, Islamophobia?  From an empirical and moral perspective, this is bonkers.

Israel and Jews were the victims of an unprovoked attack.  Antisemitism is sponsored and indulged in the US as a consequence of the terroristic attack.  And the U of Penn president is concerned about the potential for Islamophobic hate attacks?  One only need to look at the FBI hate crimes data to know this is nonsense.  Antisemitism is the longstanding, overwhelming issuing that ranges from the tragically persistent to the occasional flare ups.  Such as when Israel and American Jews are attacked and killed by Hamas.

We know how to counter antisemitism.  We have laws to address the crimes that have already been committed at the University of Pennsylvania.  The University already has policies to encourage inclusion and discourage harassment.  No study is required.  All the tools already exist, they merely need to be used.  All the laws and policies already exist, they merely need to be enforced.

The moral cravenness of this paragraph is galling.  It has two messages.  She wants to divert us by noting that the upsurge in antisemitism is happening everywhere.  Sure - that is true.  But she is the president of the University of Pennsylvania.  We are only holding her accountable for what she has allowed to happen on our campus.  Don't make excuses that it is happening elsewhere.  Especially when the upsurge is very, very, very localized.  The antisemitism on display occurs primarily on a few, select campuses among a few select student groups.  This is not a broad social or cultural surge.  This is very narrow.  

The second message is that antisemitism at U of Penn is especially disappointing because Penn has had such a long history of enrollment and integrated participation of students from a Jewish background.  Well, yes.  Again, that is true.  But it is really kind of irrelevant.  It makes the tolerance of antisemitism by the president of Penn more ironic, certainly.  But whether she tolerates antisemitism in an institution with many Jews or none is kind of irrelevant.  The sin is in the toleration of the evil of antisemitsim itself.  Her sin.

Oh good lord.  The passive meekness.  The flaccidity.  The vacuousness.  

The past several weeks?

The crafting of a plan should not have taken more than an evening.  Given the importance of community participation among stakeholders - perhaps a week at most.  Because, again, all the rule, policies, and laws are already in place.  You just need to exercise the leadership of implementing that which is already supposed to be being done.  

Instead, she resorts to weeks of talks and consultations and incorporation of third-party plans.  She wants the Penn community to take the time to go read a further document when what the community needs to see is leadership and rectitude not platitudes.  

Out of duty I click through.  Yep.  A single web page which reiterates the letter.  And that's it.  A vessel for content and no content.

That's nice.  They spent weeks deciding that they need a plan.  No, its worse than that.  They took weeks to decide that they needed to develop a plan.  This is all smoke and mirrors.  A waste of time and a toleration of an evil which she already acknowledges.  We'll get to it; Eventually - seems to be the message from Magill.  

This is where my head exploded.

At the same time, the interconnectedness of antisemitism and other forms of hate, including Islamophobia, also demands our attention and action. 

I am all for level-headedness.  I'm all for even-handedness.  Cool consideration of all the factors.  A recognition that we are all human and prone to failure, ill, and evil.  Yes!

But the problem you need to address is the antisemitism which you have tolerated and encouraged, President Magill.  To the extent that Islamophobia is a real and measurable phenomena (beyond hurt feelings), then go ahead and address it along with every other hatred that drives people to violence and threats and suppression of others.  Islamophobia is not the problem in evidence right now though.  The problem is the University leadership encouraging and sustaining antisemitism.  Solve that problem because it is real and measurable and demonstrable and evil.

But no.  Off she goes nattering about other hatreds not in evidence.  Apply all the laws and policies which already exist, equally and consistently.  That's all she has to do to address all the crimes being committed.  

The wish to talk about antisemitism elsewhere in the nation.  The need to talk about the importance of dealing with other hatreds.  The need to have time to talk and think and study.  All speak to a massive moral and leadership vacuum at the top of Penn. 

At the risk of cultural appropriation or misinterpretation.  Liz Magill - what a putz!