OPINION:
I have been an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University Law Center for about 20 years. I am also an alum and a former donor, but I recently resigned in protest upon learning of Liz Magill’s appointment as dean. I will never teach at the law school again, will never give the law school another penny, and may never even set foot there again.
Yes, that Liz Magill — the disgraced president of the University of Pennsylvania, whom Rep. Elise Stefanik, New York Republican, rightly humiliated in a congressional hearing. When asked by Ms. Stefanik during hearings on antisemitism in higher education whether calling for genocide of Jewish people would violate campus speech policies, Ms. Magill answered smugly, “It is a context-dependent decision.” It was a response delivered with a smirk, and it went viral.
True, Ms. Magill’s attorneys probably wrote that response for her, but she — the president of Penn and a lawyer herself — should have had the wisdom to avoid repeating it. Such a lack of good judgment and common sense should disqualify her from being the dean of Georgetown Law or of any other law school.
For Georgetown Law to place someone so publicly fired and humiliated in a significant leadership position at what remains one of the nation’s leading law schools raises real questions about the motivations of those who selected her. Is this about showing forgiveness because it is a Jesuit school? Or is this a way to indirectly show support for antisemitism? Presumably, there were other qualified competitors whose conduct and statements did not require overlooking such an outrageous response.
One must wonder whether the more than $1 billion that Georgetown so eagerly receives from Qatar influenced this otherwise inexplicable decision. Or perhaps it was because of the additional millions of dollars it receives from Arab countries. Perhaps Georgetown’s major donors like the idea of a law dean who has become a symbol of antisemitism in higher education.
The appointment of Ms. Magill is a national embarrassment that Georgetown Law has brought on itself, and bringing someone to campus who has proved she cannot and will not deal effectively with antisemitism shows exactly where the larger Georgetown University and the law school itself stand on this issue. Indeed, it is well known that antisemitism is pervasive in the ivory tower. What Georgetown has done by hiring Ms. Magill is, at the very least, to symbolically embrace antisemitism rather than chase it away.
If this is the kind of leadership that Georgetown University brings in to fix slipping rankings, it would not surprise me if Georgetown Law slips out of the top tier of law school rankings. When you bring in a leader who was rightly fired from Penn, no one should expect things to get better.
What kind of protection are the Jewish students to expect? Will she reproduce the controversial “Palestine Writes” festival she permitted at Penn, attended by a list of overtly antisemitic guests? Georgetown Law is well on its way to third-tier law school status, and I wish it well in its quest to get there. I am beyond disgusted and am done with Georgetown Law.
• David S. Jonas is president of Palmerston LLC and an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.
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