THE PENN DEBACLE: After President’s Remarks on Antisemitism, Penn Should Consider Her Future, the State’s Governor Says.

A day after M. Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, testified at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, the state’s Democratic governor said she had “failed” to “speak and act with moral clarity” and made an implicit call for her removal.

In her remarks, Magill did not directly answer pointed questions about whether students’ calling for the genocide of Jews violated Penn’s code of conduct. Gov. Josh Shapiro told reporters on Wednesday that Magill’s evasiveness was “absolutely shameful” and “unacceptable,” adding that Penn’s Board of Trustees “has a serious decision they need to make.”

Shapiro, a nonvoting member of the board, urged the trustees to meet soon, though their next scheduled public meeting is not until February, according to the board’s website.

Magill testified on Tuesday alongside Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay, the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, respectively, at a hearing convened by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The committee had demanded that the three leaders “answer for mishandling of antisemitic, violent protests” on their campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war, according to a news release.

Late on Wednesday, Magill issued a video statement about her comments. “In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies, aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, 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.”
Penn’s board chair did not respond immediately to requests for comment from The Chronicle. A Pennsylvania state senator on Wednesday called for Magill to resign, vowing not to support any state funding for the university until she does.

Everything is going swimmingly. Related: Harvard President Gay Traveled to Washington to Quell the Backlash. Her Testimony Only Made it Worse.

HE’S KIND TO LIMIT IT TO FINANCIAL MATTERS: James Comer to NBC host: ‘You’re financially illiterate.’

LIFTOFF!

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/iBETMTpR7m

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 7, 2023

Some parts of America still work.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Ivory Tower’s Day of Reckoning. People are noticing how many institutions have been corrupted.

Related: Anti-Semitism Hearing Highlights Ivy League Hypocrisy on Free Speech: ‘In what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn’t?’

Establishment client groups get protection. Designated class enemies do not.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? “Is the American justice system tipped in favor of Black Lives Matter rioters who burnt a Wendy’s to the ground and Portland, Oregon rioters who tried to burn down a federal courthouse?”

The justice system goes easier on rioters who come from establishment client groups.

MATT TAIBBI: Sue the Bastards: Federalist, Daily Wire Take the State Department to Court. “Bookending the historic Consortium News suit, conservative news outlets take on the Global Engagement Center for funding ‘censorship enterprises’ and blacklisting.”

GLENN LOURY AND JOHN MCWHORTER: Derek Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd.

In the documentary What Killed Michael Brown?, Shelby Steele coins the term “poetic truth” in order to describe the persistence of the myth that Michael Brown was “executed” by Darren Wilson. Steele calls poetic truth, “a distortion of the actual truth that we use to sue for leverage and power in the world. It is a partisan version of reality, a storyline that we put forward to build our case.” Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.

That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge.

But all the people who yelled “Free Mumia!” are now saying that everything is settled beyond dispute by a court.

BOB MCMANUS: Horrible poll is a wake-up call for Mayor Adams.

OPEN THREAD: Make it special.

I’M NOT SURPRISED BY HARVARD’S SLEAZE, BUT I WOULD HAVE HOPED FOR MORE FROM MIT: ‘Angry And Heartbroken’: MIT Alumni Challenge Alma Mater Over Response To Pro-Palestinian Protests.

An institution that prizes mathematical rigor and consistency and physical and immutable laws is now wrought by arbitrary and discriminatory double standards. Law-breakers flaunt the law, while law-abiders are shunned and left to fend for themselves,” the letter said.

“Jewish students are blocked from attending classes, and fearful of setting foot on campus. Jewish employees fear bringing their children to MIT Daycare. The law-breaking and rule-defying is explicitly intended as a challenge [to] the presence of Jews at MIT,” the letter continued.

The committee asked leadership that rules about protests, political speech, and civility be enforced and that those who break the laws or campus rules be “promptly brought to justice.”

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Sadly the STEM world has been just as infested with wokeness as the humanities.

SAFETY: US military grounds entire fleet of Osprey aircraft following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan.

ALSO, ABOLISH THE IVY LEAGUE: Students, Lawmakers Demand Resignation of Ivy League Presidents.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches internet technology test satellite from sea barge.

SKYNET HEALS: Cracked Piece of Metal Heals Itself in Experiment That Stuns Scientists.

THE COUPLE THAT PUMPS TOGETHER . . . Many couples around the world share high blood pressure, study says.

IT’S GRIFTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN: “They’ve taken us so insanely deeply into debt, but what if we had a brilliant, beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure to show for it? Did we get anything?!”

BEHIND THE SCENES Of The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott.

CDR SALAMANDER: Keeping an Eye on the Long Game. “Building off the last in the Long Game series from back in August, what are some of the non-military related things that might … just might … be a help in short circuiting the People’s Republic of China’s desired rise to global dominance?”

WHEN POLICE WON’T DO THEIR JOB: More NYC Bodega Owners Arming Themselves as Crime Soars in the City.

SO THIS IS BASICALLY CONFIRMING A STEREOTYPE: Linguistics study claims that languages are louder in the tropics.

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS CONCERNED TRUMP MIGHT DO WHAT BIDEN HAS BEEN DOING: “He has threatened to use the power of the presidency against his political opponents, including President Joe Biden and Biden’s family.”

I mean, I know these people are utterly lacking in self-awareness, but. . . .

HMM: Young age at first menstrual cycle linked to heightened diabetes risk in mid-life.

RONALD REAGAN POINTED OUT THAT TREES CAUSE AIR POLLUTION: Wildfires choke out air-quality gains, lead to hundreds of additional deaths.

PROF. JACOBSON: Congressional Campus Antisemitism Hearing: “The three presidents were, frankly, fairly pathetic.” My take on the hearings: “These presidents seem completely either oblivious or not being honest with what’s going on on campuses for them to say that they welcome diverse viewpoints on campus.”

ABOUT TIME: Israel Approving ‘Up to 3,000’ Gun Applications Daily.