University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill has posted a response online after comments she made before a Congressional hearing about on-campus antisemitism were roundly criticized.
"I want to be clear, a call for violence to Jewish people is threatening, deeply so," she said in a video posted online. "It is intentionally meant to terrify a people who have been subjected to pogroms and hatred for centuries and were the victims of mass genocide in the holocaust."
A pogrom, as Magill mentioned in the video, is an organized massacre of a specific group.
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Magill has faced criticism after being seemingly unable to condemn calls for genocide against Jewish people when prompted by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY during a hearing held Tuesday.
In her response, Magill said that, at that time, she was focused on defending Penn's policies which were "guided by the Constitution and the law," but with signs of hate proliferating "in a way not seen in years," she admitted that these policies must be clarified and reevaluated.
"In that moment, I was focused on our university's longstanding policies, aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable," she said in the video. "I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple."
And, though she wouldn't give a firm answer during the hearing, Magill affirmed that she felt calls for genocide of Jewish people "in my view, it would be harassment or intimidation."
Along with criticizing her comments at that hearing, on Wednesday, Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro -- who is Jewish -- said the school's board had a "serious decision" to make concerning whether Magill's comments represent the values of the Ivy League institution and the values of the board of the University of Pennsylvania.
In her reply, Magill said that she and Penn's Provost John Jackson would "immediately convene" to determine a process to "initiate a serious and careful look at our policies."
"As president, I'm committed to a safe, secure and supportive environment so all members of our community will thrives. We can and we will get this right," she promised.
Also, beyond recent criticism, two students of the university filed a lawsuit this week, alleging the school has become ‘incubation lab' for antisemitism.
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