Elizabeth Magill, the president of one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the United States, the University of Pennsylvania, has resigned after a week of harsh criticism from donors in connection with anti-Semitic scandals that tarnished the institution’s reputation, Business Insider reports.

Scott Bock, chairman of the university’s board of trustees, also announced his resignation minutes after Magill, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

The leadership of the university, which takes its name from the northeastern US state of Pennsylvania, and Magill in particular, has come under fire from donors, alumni and some current students for its response to incidents of anti-Semitism. reported on the campus of a higher education institution following the Hamas surprise attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli response that followed.

Such scandals broke out in other prestigious higher educational institutions of the USA, in particular, in Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley.

But criticism of Magill intensified after she refused to answer a December 5 congressional hearing on whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated the rules of the university she chairs.

Donors of the University of Pennsylvania threatened to cut funding

Immediately after the hearing, the board of trustees of the Wharton School, Penn’s business school, asked McGill to resign. The University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees also met Thursday and again Sunday to discuss the situation.

However, problems for Magill began even before the October 7 Hamas attack. In September, several students and alumni of the University of Pennsylvania signed an open letter asking the administration of the institution to condemn the organization of the Literary Festival of Palestinian Writers.

The letter’s signatories claimed that several people known for their anti-Semitic views were invited to speak at the event, a claim the University of Pennsylvania denies.

The letter has since been signed by billionaires Ronald Lauder and Mark Rowan, both alumni of the university and some of its major donors. Rowan, who donated $50 million to Penn in one year in 2018, later urged other wealthy Penn alumni to “close their checkbooks” until the institution’s leadership resigns.

Several other major university donors announced after Magill’s congressional hearings that they would support Mark Rowan’s appeal.

In a benchmark ranking compiled by USA Today, the University of Pennsylvania ranks sixth in the ranking of the best higher education institutions in the United States, behind only Princeton, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Harvard, Stanford and Yale University.