Left to Right: Former UPenn President, M. Elizabeth Magill, Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, and current MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
Two of the three university presidents who obstinately maintained in front of Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews could be ok depending on the context have now resigned. First to go was UPenn’s M. Elizabeth Magill, who resigned only four days after the embarrassing hearings had concluded. More recently, Harvard’s Claudine Gay has stepped down as president (though she’ll remain on the faculty, for now), after a vigorous campaign to remove her led by Bill Ackman. That leaves MIT’s Sally Kornbluth, who has avoided much of the media attention so far. That grace period for Kornbluth has come to an end as Ackman and others turn their eyes on the president. Maggie Hroncich reports in The New York Sun:
Et tu, Sally? That’s what billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who led the charge calling on Harvard University’s president, Claudine Gay, to resign, is asking, as only MIT’s president retains her position following the disastrous congressional hearing on antisemitism on December 5.
With two of the three top-tier university presidents at the hearing now gone, all eyes are on MIT’s Sally Kornbluth, whose testimony prompted as much uproar but less backlash than that of the other presidents.
Ms. Gay resigned Tuesday in the face of widespread criticism for her responses during Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s December questioning of the presidents, as well as nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism and a 17 percent drop in early applications to the university in 2023, as the Sun reported.
The University of Pennsylvania’s president, Liz Magill, resigned only days after the hearing. Mr. Ackman now appears to be turning his attention to Ms. Kornbluth, taking to X on Wednesday to say that MIT now “comes into focus” as the school loses faculty over antisemitism concerns.
Mr. Ackman reposted a resignation letter from a computer scientist, Mauricio Karchmer, who said that with “sadness” he was resigning from his academic position at MIT. “The past few months, since October 7th, have been deeply disappointing to me,” Mr. Karchmer wrote. “During a time when the Jewish and Israeli students, staff and faculty were particularly vulnerable, instead of offering the support they needed, the broader MIT community exhibited open hostility towards them.”
After five “very rewarding” years of teaching, including an algorithm class taken by more than 60 percent of MIT’s undergraduates, he said MIT “has some work to do” if it wants to continue its educational mission.
Ms. Kornbluth, who is Jewish, faced pushback from MIT Jewish alumni, who published an open letter to the president after she testified. “I have heard chants which can be antisemitic — depending on the context — when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people,” she said at the hearing.
“Calls for genocide of any group of people, including Jews, constitute bullying and harassment. Such calls originating from MIT’s campus should never be tolerated by the MIT administration and should instead be met with swift disciplinary consequences,” the alumni wrote.
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