Former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill has joined Harvard University as a visiting senior fellow.
Magill stepped down from UPenn in December after she failed to state whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates university policy.
“There was a moment during yesterday’s congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies. In that moment, I was focused on our university’s long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which says that speech alone is not punishable,” she said following the congressional hearing.
“I was not focused on, but I should have been, on the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”
According to her updated curriculum vitae, Magill will be a visiting senior fellow in Harvard’s Center on the Legal Profession for Fall 2024. She is also a visiting professor for the London School of Economics Law School for 2024-2027.
A source familiar with Magill’s positions told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the roles are temporary and unpaid.
Magill also remains a law professor at UPenn, according to the CV, although she will not be teaching classes during the fall semester.
Harvard’s Center on the Legal Profession “conducts empirical research on the structures, norms, and dynamics of the global legal profession,” its website says. “We organize our work around six research pillars.”
The pillars include globalization, careers and diversity, innovation and legal markets, legal practice, legal education, and access to justice.
Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum called Magill’s position at Harvard a “slap in the face to Jewish students.”
“Liz Magill, the former disgraced UPenn President, who couldn’t condemn the calls of genocide against Jews, has just been hired by Harvard,” Kestenbaum wrote on X. “This is a slap in the face to Jewish students. She will join her friend Claudine Gay as two equally incompetent ‘scholars.’”
