“These universities have shown themselves to be evil at the core.” Why former UPenn patron David Magerman has given up on the Ivy League

Photos: Alamy photos, Family archives

Jewish students at campuses across America have been on the sharp end of a surge in anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Israel activity in recent years. While pro-Israel speakers were harassed, university administrators sat by, and Jewish life on campus suffered.

In the wake of the October 7 attacks, that slow-burn deterioration turned to something far worse. Long before Israel had begun its offensive into Gaza, left-leaning academics joined an army of students in a vicious campaign of victim-blaming. Belated, pro-forma and equivocating statements from university officials against Hamas’s actions were drowned out by the ferocity of pro-Hamas support across many campuses.

At the very institutions that abound with safe spaces to shield students from discrimination of all types, expressions of vicious anti-Semitism were given the go-ahead.

Some donors tried to push back, leveraging their support to force the universities to treat the concerns of Jewish students with at least as much seriousness as fat-phobia, but the pro-Palestinian hysteria was allowed to continue.

Things came to a head last week when the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT were grilled in Congress about their schools’ policies. The widely-seen responses of the Ivy League school heads were disturbing.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes, or no?” Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a New York representative repeatedly asked Penn President Liz Magill, to which Magill responded: “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.”

Similar prevarications about free speech were the only response from the other two school heads, in clips that provoked widespread disquiet.

For David Magerman, a computer scientist, philanthropist, and Penn donor, the responses were what he’s come to expect from institutions like his alma mater. They’ve fallen prey, he says, to an anti-American sickness of which anti-Semitism is just one manifestation.

An Orthodox Jew whose own journey to religious practice has led to an increasing identification with the need for Jewish education — reflected in support for organizations from Chabad and MEOR on campus to Project Inspire — Magerman was jolted into action even before the October 7 attacks.

But in the wake of Penn’s response, he’s severed all links with the university and now urges “any self-respecting Jew” to do the same.

With Magill having resigned following  negative reaction to her response, and calls for the resignation of the other two presidents mounting, David Magerman won’t be coming back. It’s no longer enough to change leadership, he contends, because the rot at these high-profile institutions is too deep for cosmetic changes. The poison that has set in at the Ivies is now so far gone, he thinks, that there’s no way back.

For large numbers of Americans —including the Jewish community —the sight of three Ivy League school presidents refusing to answer whether calls for intifada was forbidden speech made for shocking viewing. Given your history with Penn in particular, were you surprised by the encounter in Congress?

It was jarring to hear their tone, but I wasn’t surprised, because it’s consistent with the stance they’ve taken all along. And from a legal perspective, they had to take that stance, because if they said what the truth is, which is that calling for genocide of Jews is a violation of their codes of conduct, then they’ll be exposed to lawsuits for not having punished those violations.

All three of the presidents were seemingly coached by the same legal team, to come out with a unified presentation of this position, that the code of conduct is subjective, and that they apply it to the best of their abilities. I believe that will give them some legal screen to win those lawsuits that are filed against them. But it’s despicable that they have put themselves in the position that they have to take that stance.

Let’s play devil’s advocate: Is there not a maximalist free-speech position that allows that hands-off approach to enforcing campus rhetoric? 

No, free-speech in America means that the government is not permitted to restrict speech, except for calls for violence. A university or corporation is certainly allowed to limit speech. But even if they weren’t, the free speech defense is not applied uniformly. They’re using it as a weapon, hiding behind free speech to permit hate speech against Jews but not against those who are committing that hate speech. If there was someone standing up calling for the genocide of African-Americans or Hispanics, those people would be expelled.