The.

President of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz McGill, has resigned, and we've just gotten word that the Chair of the University of Pennsylvania's Board of trustees, Scott Bach, has also resigned. Effective immediately, the U-Penn controversy began spiraling earlier this week after McGill's testimony before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus.

Specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment? If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment. The answer is yes. It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman. It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today, calling for the genocide of Jews is depending.

Upon the context.

That was Tuesday, and this was the cleanup attempt by Liz McGill on Wednesday. In that moment, I was focused on our.

University's long-standing policies.

Aligned with the.

Us.

Constitution.

Which say that speech alone is not punishable. These policies need to.

Be clarified and evaluated.

That obviously was not enough. And of course, she has now stepped down, so has the Chair of the Board of trustees at the University of Pennsylvania. And we have team coverage on all of this. You have Matt Sandoval, Matt Eagen. Polo, let me start with you. What's the latest? What can you tell us?

The developments have been swift moving here, Jim, with McGill tonight, announcing that she will be stepping down amid that growing chorus of calls asking for her resignation in light of that testimony that she offered in Washington just this past Tuesday in a statement released by the University. We have learned that McGill is expected to remain tenured as faculty at Penn Kerry Law, and that she has also agreed to stay on at least until the interim President can potentially be appointed for some context here. Mcgill has been under growing scrutiny for her handling of anti-Semitism on campus, and that testimony that was offered on Tuesday was really the last straw here, mainly referring to that or at least her inability to just unequivocally say that any mention of genocide of Jewish people would be against the code of conduct at the University. We should also mention that we heard from other university officials tonight, including one that we'll talk about here in a few moments, basically trying to paint a clearer picture of what he believed played out on Tuesday saying that McGill was, quote, over-prepared, that she was over-lawored and essentially provided a legalistic answer to a moral question.

So what you have now is coming from the now-former chair of U. Penn's Board of trustees trying to explain what was an absolutely disastrous testimony that played out on Tuesday.

Let me go to Matt Eagen. Matt, I know you've been reporting on the school being under tremendous pressure from donors. The donor community has been outraged over these comments. Take us behind the scenes on that.

Ijeom, a remarkable developments this evening. At one of the nation's most prestigious schools, first the board chair, Scott Bach, sent out a letter saying that the President, Liz McGillow, is out. Then Scott Bach sent out a statement saying he's out too. Now, make no mistake, both of these leaders were under pressure for months, as Polo just said. Again, it was over issues of anti-Semitism on campus, but Tuesday's hearing, which can only be described as disastrous, really was the final straw. That hearing lasted for hours, but it really just came down to just a precious few minutes where the leaders of Penn and Harvard and MIT, they struggled. They struggled to answer a question that many people would think would be easy to answer. Does calls for genocide of Jews, does that break the school's rules? And the leaders, including McGill, they fumbled that response. They did give a legal answer, and that moment went viral on the Internet. It just exploded. The backlash was so intense. We heard from the Wharton Board of Advisors, which is basically a who's who of business leaders. They called for an immediate leadership change at the school. More than 70 members of Congress, a bipartisan group calling for McGill to resign.

It's hard to get 70 members of Congress to agree on much, but they agreed on that. You also had the former US ambassador, John Huntsman, telling me that it wasn't even debatable whether or not McGill should leave. You also had one mega donor threatening to cancel a $100 million gift if a change wasn't made. Now, Scott Bach was effusive in his praise of Liz McGill calling her a very good person, saying that she's not in the slightest bit anti-Semitic. I want to read you one line from Bach's statement. He said, talking about the hearing, Overprepared and overlawered given the hostile forum and high stakes. She provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong. It made for a dreadful 30-second soundbite in what was more than 5 hours of testimony. Jim, there you have it. You have both, Liz McGill and Scott Bach, stepping down after that disastrous hearing on Tuesday.

Yeah, just a devastating afternoon for the University of Pennsylvania. All right, Polis Inovall and Matt Eagen, thanks to both of you. I want to bring in Alex Proact. He's a professor with the UPenn School of Medicine. Professor, what's your response tonight?

Well, frankly, I can't say I'm happy because it's hard to be happy about all the things that have been happening at the university. But I do believe that Liz McGill could not have continued being the president given a number of, I would say, mistakes that she and people who, I guess, maybe lawyer to her up and prepared her aid. I think she lost the trust of the community of faculty, donors, students. Of course, people have very complex opinions about the Israeli-Palestinean conflict, but this is about something completely different.

I mean, the chair of the board, Scott Bach, tried to describe it as just a 30-second soundbite that did not go well for President McGill. But we talked to a Penn student in the last hour who has described a pretty hostile atmosphere on campus and that this has been building for some time. How would you describe things?

Well, I definitely think that the soundbite during the hearings did not help, but Ms. Mcgill could have helped herself by issuing a last lawyer-d-up apology or explanation of what happened during that hearing. Unfortunately, that too was canned. I don't think anybody who heard that post-hawk description, felt that it was at all sincere. I don't think it is fair to say it's just an unfortunate soundbite. We've all said things we did not mean, but given an opportunity to clarify the situation, she did not do that.

How do you think this news is going to be received by students, by the faculty? What do you think?

Well, I think people have different opinions, and maybe that's the important bit, is that I understand that the lack of desire to unequivocally condemn calls for genocide is coached within the framework of free speech. But unfortunately, and many people have written and spoken about this, it's hard to cast university like U-Pen as very much pro-free speech. Speech tends to be limited in many different respects. I am actually a proponent of free speech. I think people are probably going to have very different opinions depending on where they stand politically and how they feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, et cetera. That's a good thing. People should be having debates. They shouldn't cross over into violence. They shouldn't cross over into hate speech, et cetera. But within the norms of human behavior, I think people should differ on their opinions and have conversations.

Why do you think we saw the chair of the board, Scott Bach, resign in addition to the university's president?

I'm not really privy, of course, to any of these discussions. I suspect that maybe there is a realization that they've waited a bit too long, that maybe with the number of, again, unfortunate, and in my opinion, incorrect moves, she could not have really governed and corrected the course. I don't know if the idea to keep Liz McGill longer than she probably should have stayed, came from Bach, and maybe that is why he decided to step down. But I would be just guessing. I don't know.