UPenn reportedly asking President Liz Magill to step down

The University of Pennsylvania is expected to ask its president, Liz Magill, to resign Friday over growing outrage at her failure to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jewish people — a move celebrated by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who said it would be “one down.”

The Ivy League school’s Board of Trustees held an emergency meeting Thursday to deal with the fallout from Magill’s disastrous Congressional testimony on Tuesday, which has already seen a Wall Street titan trying to claw back a $100 million donation and calls for her ouster.

Board Chairman Scott Bok is expected to talk to Magill about resigning on Friday, a source familiar with the proceedings told CNN.

“One down,” wrote Ackman, one of the most outspoken critics of colleges failing to stop rising antisemitism.

“There is hope for UPenn,” he wrote while sharing the CNN report.

“I give this a 95% probability,” the Pershing Square CEO said of the likelihood of Magill stepping down. “It is not yet a certainty.”

Still, Magill remains president, and a spokesperson for the school told CNN there is no immediate plan to replace her.

“There is no board plan for imminent leadership change,” the spokesperson told CNN.

The school did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for an update Friday.

UPenn is facing increasing pressure to change its leadership, from major donors to those within its own staff — and even from the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.

The governor, who is Jewish, called Magill’s testimony “shameful” and urged the board of trustees to meet to decide whether her statements were in line with the school’s values.

“Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity, and Liz Magill failed to meet that simple test,” Shapiro told Jewish Insider.

“Frankly, I thought her comments were absolutely shameful,” he said. “It should not be hard to condemn genocide.”

Shapiro then called for Penn’s board to “meet soon” to decide whether Magill’s testimony “represents the views and values of the University of Pennsylvania” but said he would wait to see what action they take before taking action himself.

The board of Penn’s Wharton Business School has also called on Magill to resign, sending her a letter directly on Thursday in which members boasted about their powerful positions.

Members of the board include financier Ronald Perelman, banker Ken Moelis, and billionaire sports team owner Josh Harris, according to the Wharton Board of Advisors website.

“As a result of the university leadership’s stated beliefs and collective failure to act, our board respectfully suggests to you and the Board of Trustees that the university requires new leadership with immediate effect,” they wrote in their letter, obtained by the Post.

“Our board has been, and remains, deeply concerned about the dangerous and toxic culture of our campus that has been led by a select group of students and faculty and that has been permitted by University leadership.

“As confirmed in your congressional testimony yesterday, the leadership of the university does not share the values of our board.”

Former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman, whose family has donated millions to the university, also called on the board of trustees to remove Magill.

“Let’s make this great institution shine once again,” he said in a statement to CNN.

“We are anchored to the past until the trustees step up and completely cut ties with current leadership. Full stop.”

“At this point, it’s not even debatable,” Huntsman said of the decision to remove Magill, calling it “just a simple IQ test.”

Meanwhile, Wall Street tycoon Thursday vowed to claw back a $100 million donation to the university if it doesn’t boot Magill.

Ross Stevens, the boss of Stone Ridge Asset Management, joined a growing chorus of high-powered donors and outraged elected officials – that now include Keystone State Gov. Josh Shapiro – who are calling for Magill’s head.

The hedge fund titan said he has “clear grounds” to rescind his donation and that law firm Davis Polk has sent the school a letter saying as much.

“Absent a change in leadership and values at Penn in the very near future, I plan to rescind Penn’s Stone Ridge shares to prevent any further reputational and other damage to Stone Ridge as a result of our relationship with Penn and Liz Magill,” read the letter, which was obtained by The Post.

“I love Penn and it is important to me, but our firm’s principles are more important.”

Amid the criticism for her testimony, Magill issued a groveling apology video in which she tried to explain her head-scratching testimony by saying she was not “focused” on the issue, and said that she wanted to “be clear” that calls for genocide were “evil, plain and simple.”

But she also seemingly blamed university policies and even the US Constitution for allowing the calls to be made on campus.

“There was a moment during yesterday’s Congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies,” Magill began the two-minute-long video.

“In that moment, I was focused on the university’s long-standing policies — aligned with the US Constitution — which say that speech alone is not punishable.”