Will Liz Magill’s career survive the weekend? Frankly, some must have been surprised to see her job as University of Pennsylvania president survive the week. After Magill’s contemptuous and contemptible testimony to Congress earlier in the week, calls for her termination have boiled up from the student body, the alumni, and even sotto voce from Democrat governor Josh Shapiro.

Only half-jokingly, I tweeted this out yesterday afternoon, a joking reference to a classic case of social-media cancellation:

#HasMagillLandedYet

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) December 8, 2023

Magill has not ‘landed’ yet, but the crash may happen tomorrow instead. Faced with a donor revolt that has cost Penn a $100 million endowment and legislative action holding up another $31 million in state funds, the trustees will hold an emergency meeting to determine the best way out of the crisis Magill created. But .. wasn’t the board supposed to take action regarding Magill yesterday?

The University of Pennsylvania board of trustees will hold an emergency meeting Sunday to deliberate over the fate of President Liz Magill, as calls for her ouster have escalated following her widely panned testimony to a House committee this week about responding to antisemitism on campus.

The trustee meeting, plans for which were reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, comes on the heels of a call for Magill’s resignation from Penn graduate David Pottruck, the CEO of Charles Schwab, for whom the university’s health and fitness center is named. …

On Thursday, the board of Wharton, the university’s business school, said Magill needed to resign. That same day Ross Stevens, CEO of the financial services firm Stone Ridge Asset Management, told the university in a letter from his attorneys that he would rescind about $100 million of a 2019 gift to Penn.

Additionally, more than 70 members of Congress Friday called for the trustees of Penn — as well as Harvard and MIT — to fire their presidents, according to Reuters.

Why wait until Sunday to deal with this? Initially, Penn’s board of trustees offered a wan and boilerplate statement of support for Magill as the scandal blew up in their faces. By Thursday, however, Wharton had gone public with their demand for her resignation, and the trustees held their first “emergency meeting” that same day. Reportedly, the board decided to send its chair to ask Magill for her resignation, although another leaker to the local ABC affiliate denied it:

The University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees held an emergency meeting Thursday. Once source familiar with the board’s proceedings told CNN Scott Bok, the chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees, was expected Thursday or Friday to talk to Magill about possibly stepping down. But another source with close knowledge of the board’s activity denied that meeting was taking place and said the board was not close to holding discussions with Magill about a leadership change. …

Penn currently does not have an interim president lined up if Magill were to step down, a source said.

That leads us to two possibilities. One: The board didn’t meet at all on Thursday or Friday, not even while donors pulled a nine-figure endowment and the legislature threatened to cut off funds, and the trustees just prefer to spend their Sundays on crises rather than weekdays. Two: Bok went to Magill yesterday to get her resignation and she refused, which will force the trustees to fire her before start of business on Monday.

Option One is possible, but Option Two seems more likely, no? If you’re not yet convinced, consider that WTHM independently reported that the trustees did in fact meet on Thursday to deal with the Magill scandal,  as well as the legislative threat to block all state funds while Magill remains at Penn. That suggests that the ABC report was accurate and that Bok likely tried without success to talk Magill into a resignation on Thursday or Friday.

Hence the need for a Sunday confab, and the calendar speaks volumes here. If the board is holding another “emergency meeting” after that sequence of events, then the only real purpose would be to fire Magill. That doesn’t mean they will vote to terminate Magill, but it’s the only way out of the disaster that Magill has created for Penn, and by this time everyone knows it … except, apparently Magill.

If it’s any consolation to her, Magill won’t be alone. With Congress ramping up investigations into discriminatory practices at the Poison Ivies, the boards at Harvard, MIT, and Penn will eventually need a public sacrifice to argue that they’ve learned a lesson. Even if Magill, Claudine Gay, and Sally Kornbluth refuse to leave, eventually all three will get the boot. Magill will just be the first to land.

But what about free speech, critics have cried. This is an utterly dishonest argument, as we have pointed out numerous times. Harvard has the worst record on allowing dissent and debate on its campus, and Penn is a close second-worst. Yesterday, I spoke with Genesis10 CEO Harley Lippman, who serves on boards at Columbia and Yale as well as on the executive committee for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Harley and I had a lengthy discussion about the hypocrisy of these First Amendment defenses by Magill et al, as well as the history of Israel and the war in Gaza, in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast:

• Many of us have expressed shock at both the grotesque and barbaric October 7 attacks by Hamas, as well as the rush to embrace Hamas’ cause on the streets and college campuses of America.
• Harley Lippman, a member of boards at both Columbia and Yale as well as an executive committee member for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, shares the shock but reminds us of the history involved.
• We discuss the “Poison Ivies” moment in Congress, the need to correct the record on a number of fronts when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and why this is worse than Pearl Harbor for Israel … while the world largely backs the perpetrators.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!