The president of an Ivy League university has stepped down after a firestorm of criticism following a congressional hearing on the rise of anti-Semitism on US college campuses.
University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill has "voluntarily resigned," University Board of Trustees Chairman Scott Bock said.
Bock then resigned from his post himself, the campus student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, reported.
Magill was among three elite university presidents who came under fire for testimony Tuesday during a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses.
The trio gave lengthy and seemingly evasive answers during the hearing on whether students who call for the "genocide of the Jews" on their campuses are violating student codes of conduct.
The reverberation was fast and loud.
Seventy-four lawmakers wrote letters demanding the immediate removal of Magill and the presidents of Harvard University and MIT.
Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, later apologized for not more strongly condemning threats of anti-Semitic violence on her campus.
"When words amplify suffering and pain, I don't know how you can feel anything but regret," Gay later told the Harvard Crimson newspaper.
Magill came under even sharper criticism.
Pennsylvania's governor called her performance "absolutely disgraceful," and a major donor to the academic institution said it would revoke its $100 million donation to the university.
Bock, who chairs the university's Board of Trustees - a body that deals with important governance issues - said Magill made a "very unfortunate mistake" in announcing her departure.
He said his own resignation was "effective immediately".
Bock's memo to the campus said Magill will remain in his post pending the appointment of an interim president and will remain on the faculty of the university's law school.
Anti-Semitism and hate crimes have increased in the US and on college campuses since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants and the subsequent war in Gaza.
As passions flared on college campuses, a wider debate took place about when free speech on campus./BGNES
