Liz Magill’s UPenn resignation is just the first step in ridding campuses of antisemitism

 

by MICHAEL GOODWIN

Now that Liz Magill is about to become the former president of the University of Pennsylvania, the only sensible reaction is to hope she is the first of many college leaders to hit the road.

Magill’s forced resignation, following her sickening tolerance of antisemitism on Penn’s campus and her smug, disastrous congressional testimony, is reason to hope America’s educational rot has reached peak madness. The test is whether her comeuppance represents a sacrificial one-off or the start of a wholesale house cleaning of administrators who sold their souls to the woke mob.

That’s the moral clarity the nation needs and the moment demands.

Make no mistake: the outbreak of antisemitism on campuses across America is the virulent result of decades of radical professors whose far-left politics have turned elite institutions into anti-American indoctrination factories.

The daily drumbeat of contempt for our nation’s Founders, its military, police and civic institutions have fostered a hatred of Western civilization, its principles and morals. Cancel culture, gender madness and the embrace of racial discrimination in pursuit of diversity and equity are examples of the poisoned fruit of that agenda.

Incubators of hate

In hindsight, it was inevitable that those former citadels of learning would also produce Jew-hating, Israel-bashing supporters of terrorism. And so here we are, the evidence irrefutable that a purge at the top of the academic pyramid is essential.

It won’t be easy or quick because the radicals’ capture of education has been so complete and their tentacles are dug deeply into the culture. That’s how they have been able to resist reform for decades.
The hope that this time could be different stems in part from the simple fact that Magill and the presidents of Harvard and MIT were summoned to appear before Congress in the first place, where their masks of professional trustworthiness were shredded.

The backdrop wasn’t just the antisemitism roiling many campuses since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. It was also because college leaders have mostly been mum as Jewish students felt threatened and harassed by calls for the elimination of Israel.

Some administrators actually defended the intimidating behavior on the grounds of free speech. Others, like Magill, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, tried to hide behind legalisms and claims their hands were tied by the Constitution.

That is patently absurd because the same administrators don’t invoke free speech defenses for conservative speakers when student mobs threaten them and shout them down. The clear double standard undercut the three witnesses even before they wilted under the fiery questions from New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Even Democrats, the party most aligned with campus radicals, were appalled at the testimony.
When the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, threw his support behind the movement to fire Magill, her fate was clear.

But she shouldn’t go alone.

Although she was the pinup president because of her cold inaction during the past two months while antisemitic incidents piled up at Penn, Magill and her two sidekicks were representatives of hundreds if not thousands of college leaders who are failing the test of adult leadership.