University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill announced her resignation on Saturday (December 9) after appearing before Congress and apparently evaded the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be punished.
The New York Times reported that Magill announced her resignation a day before a meeting before UPenn's board of trustees, with its chair, Scroll L. Bok, said that her resignation was "voluntarily tendered" before announcing his own resignation an hour later.
Magill was already in a precarious position since the university's initial response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and her apparent approach to a Palestinian literary conference on campus, which triggered a slew of criticism from influential alumni and public officials and a withdrawal of donations by wealthy contributors.
The move made Magill the first university president to step down in relation to antisemitic incidents across US campuses in the aftermath of the October 7 attack.
Castigation on Capitol Hill
Previously, Magill, Claudine Gay of Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT were summoned by a committee of lawmakers in Washington to tackle the rising antisemitism in their respective campuses. During the hearing, the university presidents appeared to avoid answering questions on whether or not they would discipline students who were calling out for the genocide of Jews.
In the aftermath of the presidents' deflections, politicians, student groups, and Jewish organizations have called for the resignation of the three. In particular, Harvard Hillel, a Jewish student organization within Harvard, criticized Gay for her testimony on Capitol Hill and called for her resignation.
SNL Lampoons Congress Hearing
Meanwhile, Saturday Night Live created a cold opener mocking the Congress hearing on antisemitism on college campuses for its December 9 episode, hours after Magill's resignation.
According to the New York Post, the skit copied the format of a C-SPAN broadcast to poke fun at Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth as they testified before the House Education Committee and the lawmakers involved in the hearing.
However, not everyone found the jab on the inquiry funny, as viewers took to social media to express their concern that the piece undermined the seriousness of antisemitic incidents on college campuses.
Only a hate filled, anti-Semitic SNL could do a sketch about the anti-Semitic college presidents testifying in front of Congress and make the questioner Congresswoman Stefanik the target of the sketch.
— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) December 10, 2023
"Only a hate-filled, anti-Semitic SNL could do a sketch about the anti-Semitic college presidents testifying in front of Congress and make the questioner Congresswoman Stefanik the target of the sketch," radio host Mark Simone wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Saturday Night Live was created and initially produced by 79-year-old Lorne Michaels, who was born to a Jewish family on a kibbutz in then-British Mandatory Palestine before his family moved to Toronto.
In other parts of SNL's latest episode, Chlore Fineman dropped by the program to express her interest in watching the 2001 film "Save the Last Dance." While dancing to describe a scene in the movie, the film's lead actress, Julia Stiles, appeared to join Fineman to the tune of the crowd's cheers and applause, ET reported.
