The University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees on Tuesday appointed J. Larry Jameson as the school’s interim president following Liz Magill’s resignation over the weekend.
Magill announced her plan to resign on Saturday amid a wave of backlash from alumni, donors and politicians after she equivocated, during a heated congressional hearing last week, on questions over whether students should be disciplined if they call for the genocide of Jews. Magill agreed to stay on in the role until an interim president was selected.
The board approved a motion to appoint Jameson, the dean of UPenn’s medical school, during a 2 p.m. Zoom meeting on Tuesday. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday evening that the board was considering Jameson for the position.
Magill’s departure came after she, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, participated in a contentious, hourslong grilling from lawmakers last week over the leaders’ handling of antisemitism on their campuses.
But Magill is the only one of the three so far to end up out of the job. Harvard’s governing board released a statement on Tuesday morning standing by Gay amid the calls for her removal, and Kornbluth received her governing board’s “full and unreserved support” two days after her testimony.
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