UPenn Hit With Antisemitism Lawsuit

UPenn Hit With Antisemitism Lawsuit

As we recently reported, on December 5 the Presidents of Harvard and MIT and the former University of Pennsylvania President famously testified to Congress, each of them refusing to state that calls by students and faculty at their respective schools for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct:

🚨🚨🚨Presidents of @Harvard @MIT and @Penn REFUSE to say whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” is bullying and harassment according to their codes of conduct. Even going so far to say it needs to turn to “action” first. As in committing genocide.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND… pic.twitter.com/hUY3SgoOOi

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 5, 2023

In an interview after the testimony, Professor Jacobson stated that “the three Presidents were, frankly, fairly pathetic.” From his post:

BIG TAKEAWAY –

THESE THREE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS ARE VERY UNIMPRESSIVE PEOPLE.

And I’m being generous.

After the Congressional testimony, Penn lost a $100 million donation, as we reported: UPenn Loses $100 Million Donation Following Disastrous Hearing on Campus Anti-Semitism

And, of course, now we know that Liz Magill, the President of Penn, and Scott Bok, Chair of the Penn Board of Trustees, have both resigned, as Professor Jacobson reported: U. Penn President Liz Magill Resigns (Update: Chair of Bd of Trustees Scott Bok Also Resigns).

You might not want to be too quick to shed a tear over former President Liz Magill’s plight, however, since she is still a fully tenured professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School:

NEW: Penn president Liz Magill has resigned after a truly wild week in the world of campus antisemitism.

She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn's law school. pic.twitter.com/cl2HsheJb4

— Gabby Deutch (@GSDeutch) December 9, 2023

Of course her bio at the law school is overflowing with all of her accolades:

On July 1, 2022, M. Elizabeth “Liz” Magill became the University of Pennsylvania’s ninth president. A legal scholar and inspiring leader, Magill comes to Penn after serving as Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Virginia and, prior to that, as the Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean of the Stanford Law School. Magill’s leadership at both UVA and Stanford brought transformative changes to both institutions.

You have to go pretty deep into Magill’s bio to realize that she actually at one point used to be a professor of administrative and constitutional law. Too bad she was too busy being an administrative apparatchik to remember some of her con law. Oh well, she’ll be fine.

James Woods sums up:

She didn't get fired. They just rearranged the chess pieces on the board.

She'll still be hustling "context" to the lemmings at the law school. https://t.co/mDaLDRj7Op

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 10, 2023

Which brings us to the point of this post: on the same day former President Magill and her two antisemitic buddies testified to Congress, Penn was jackhammered with a major antisemitism lawsuit by the same Manhattan heavy-hitter law firm (Kasowitz Benson Torres) that slammed NYU with an antisemitism lawsuit two weeks ago, which we covered: NYU Slammed with Massive Antisemitism Lawsuit.

The “Preliminary Statement” in the NYU lawsuit detailed the disgusting antisemitism rampant allegedly present at NYU as follows:

The age-old virus of antisemitism is alive and well at New York University. This case arises from NYU’s egregious civil rights violations that have created a hostile educational environment in which plaintiffs and other Jewish NYU students have been subjected to pervasive acts of hatred, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation. For years, NYU—acutely aware of ongoing and disgraceful acts of anti-Jewish bigotry—has reacted with, at best, deliberate indifference, refusing to enforce its own anti-discrimination and conduct policies that it readily applies to protect other targets of bigotry, and instead fostering an environment in which students and faculty members are permitted to repeatedly abuse, malign, vilify, and threaten Jewish students with impunity. Regularly confronted with such genocidal chants as, “Hitler was right,” “gas the Jews,” “death to kikes,” and “from the river to the sea,” and other abuse, plaintiffs not only have been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully and meaningfully participate in NYU’s educational and other programs, but they have suffered and have been put at severe risk of extreme emotional and physical injury.

[emphasis added]

Similarly, the Complaint in the Penn lawsuit details the goings on at Penn:

1. Penn, the historic 300-year-old Ivy League university, has transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination. Once welcoming to Jewish students, Penn now subjects them to a pervasively hostile educational environment. Among other things, Penn enforces its own rules of conduct selectively to avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment, hires rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence and spread terrorist propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection. In doing so, Penn has placed plaintiffs and other Jewish and Israeli students at severe emotional and physical risk.

2. This lawsuit seeks to hold Penn accountable under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for the damages it has caused plaintiffs and for its failure to remedy the hostile environment on its campus. The harassment and discrimination on campus and in the classroom are relentless and intolerable. Plaintiffs and their Jewish peers are routinely subjected to vile and threatening antisemitic slurs and chants such as “Intifada Revolution,” “from the River to the Sea,” “Fuck the Jews,” “the Jews deserve everything that is happening to them,” “you are a dirty Jew, don’t look at us,” “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” “get out of here kikes!” and “go back to where you came from.” Plaintiffs and other Jewish students must traverse classrooms, dormitories, and buildings vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. Subjected to intense anti-Jewish vitriol, these students have been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully and meaningfully participate in Penn’s educational and other programs.

[emphasis added]

You can read the entire, 259-paragraph, 84-page Complaint here, but please watch this quick 5-minute video by the lead Plaintiff in the Penn lawsuit to get a feel for how he and other Jewish students at Penn are (allegedly) treated by their fellow students, Professors, and the Penn Administration:

Eyal Yakoby a student @Penn “I used to think this was nonsense, fear-mongering, until I was made aware that Penn recommended students ‘not wear clothing/accessories related to Judaism’.

pic.twitter.com/Mu4S89RIdU

— Avraham Berkowitz (@GlobalRabbi) December 6, 2023

This student might be the best trial witness in the history of federal lawsuits, but my guess is Penn will settle this case out of fear that this student will decimate them at trial. I hope not, and I hope Kasowitz lines up about 30 other Jewish student trial witnesses who can testify to the horrific treatment they have suffered at Penn and the university’s appalling lack of response to that treatment.

We shall see.

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