Penn, you’re next. After requesting reams of documents from Harvard University relating to its response to anti-Semitic incidents on campus and its investigation of and response to allegations of plagiarism against former university president Claudine Gay, Congress is turning to the University of Pennsylvania.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, before whom both Gay and former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill appeared in mid-December, is giving Penn’s board of trustees two weeks to produce documents regarding its response to several anti-Semitic incidents that have roiled the campus, from the theft of Israeli flags from university apartment buildings to the ransacking of the campus Hillel building in late September of last year.
A Washington Free Beacon report earlier this month indicated that Penn students were responsible for these attacks, but the school has refused to comment on what if any disciplinary action it has taken to address the incidents.
The House committee, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), wants to know, demanding from the school “documents sufficient to show the findings and results of any disciplinary processes, changes in academic status, or personnel actions by Penn toward Penn students, faculty,” and student organizations “related to conduct involving the targeting of Jews” since January 1, 2021.
The committee is also seeking documents relating to the sources of funding for the Palestine Writes Festival, a university event held in September of 2023 that featured several anti-Semitic speakers including Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.
The letter, addressed to the chairman of Penn’s board of trustees, Ramanan Raghavendran, and interim university president Larry Jameson, can be read in its entirety here.
