A Wall Street tycoon Thursday vowed to claw back a $100 million donation to the University of Pennsylvania if the Ivy League school doesn’t boot UPenn President Liz Magill following her disastrous congressional testimony that failed to condemn rampant antisemitism on campus.
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’re 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 varsity a letter saying as much.
“Absent a change in leadership and values at Penn within 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 results of our relationship with Penn and Liz Magill,” read the letter, which was obtained by The Post.
“ I like Penn and it is vital to me, but our firm’s principles are more essential.”
“We will’t comment on the non-public decisions of our donors,” a UPenn spokesperson said.
Magill made a groveling apology Wednesday for her refusal to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jewish people on campus in her remarks to Congress.
Nonetheless, her mea culpa will not be enough.
Early Thursday, the varsity’s Board of Trustees called an off-the-cuff meeting over Zoom that sources told The Post was monitored by a representative for Shapiro, who had condemned Magill’s testimony as “shameful.”
“The Congressional testimony modified every little thing,” a source with knowledge of the Board’s pondering said.
Shapiro’s proxy said the governor is searching for “motion on the board’s part.”
On the meeting, a handful of trustees said they need Magill to step down while others voiced their support for her, sources said.
Scott Bok, the chairman of the Board of Trustees, also apparently got here under scrutiny with some members encouraging him to resign.
While the board didn’t make any key decisions in the course of the hours-long discussion, a choice was made to call one other meeting “very soon,” sources added.
“They appear to be moving fast,” one other source said of Board members’ plan to schedule a four- to five-hour meeting in the approaching days.
There isn’t a board plan for imminent leadership change,” the UPenn spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Gov. Shapiro didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The pressure on Magill to get pushed out can be being ratcheted up by the Wharton Board of trustees — a bunch chaired by Apollo CEO Marc Rowan that features a veritable who’s who of business leaders.
The group — which incorporates financier Ronald Perelman, banker Ken Moelis, and billionaire sports team owner Josh Harris – has called for a change in leadership.
Rowan had called for UPenn alums to “close their checkbook” following the rise of antisemitism on the varsity’s campus.
“As confirmed in your congressional testimony (Tuesday), the leadership of the University doesn’t share the values of our Board,” a letter sent to Magill read.
“Further, as a results 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 recent leadership with immediate effect.”
The group called for a lot of amendments to the Wharton Code of Conduct that it recommends be adopted by each Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania that features standards of behaviors including demanding nobody use language to incite violence or threaten the protection of other members on campus.
Magill posted a video on the Ivy League’s website Wednesday wherein she tried to explain her head-scratching testimony by saying she was not “focused” on the difficulty, and said that she wanted to “be clear” that calls for genocide were “evil, plain and easy.”
But she also seemingly blamed university policies and even the US Structure for allowing the calls to be made on campus.
“There was a moment during yesterday’s Congressional hearing on antisemitism after 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 used to be focused on the university’s long-standing policies — aligned with the US Structure — which say that speech alone shouldn’t be punishable.
Shapiro had previously been nudged to consider getting involved, as The Post reported.
According to an esoteric law, if the governor shows up to a gathering of UPenn’s Board of Trustees, he can run the meeting.
David Krone, an Apollo executive who previously served as Chief of Staff to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is a detailed friend of the Pennsylvania governor, sources said. On the time, Shapiro was considering making an appearance on the meeting as a card up his sleeve.
Shapiro called out Magill after her testimony.
“That was an unacceptable statement from the president of Penn,” Shapiro said. ”Frankly, I believed her comments were absolutely shameful. It shouldn’t be hard to condemn genocide.”
Chatter of ousting Magill comes only a month after a fizzled effort by a number of trustees on UPenn’s board to stage a no-confidence vote to oust UPenn Chair Scott Bok.
However the university said in a press release following the event that Magill received a “standing ovation” from trustees after announcing that there was “overwhelming support for the present chair continuing in his role.”
One source close to the situation called trustees who decided to support Bok “spineless weasels” and “pathetic.”
University leadership got here under fire for its failure to condemn the Hamas attacks and its subsequent inability to protect Jewish students on campus.