The University of Pennsylvania’s motto comes from a quote from Horace, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae — “Laws without morals are in vain.”
But it is a lack of morals, of a willingness to stand up to antisemitism, that has created a “climate of fear” across campus.
Demonstrations headed by “Penn Students Against the Occupation,” recognized as an official club by the university, have left students at the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school worried about whether it is a safe environment for learning.
Incidents on campus have made it a flashpoint in the debate over how far protests can go.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations feature chants calling for “intifada” or uprising, which has also been sprayed as graffiti across campus, alongside “Avenge Gaza.”
Worse, one property next to a Jewish fraternity house was scrawled with “The Jews R Nazis” at the end of October.
“The student group … has continuously organized antisemitic and violent protests on our campus and have had no actions taken against them by the university,” Noah Rubin, a junior majoring in electrical engineering and economics, told The Post.
“We’re fed up with the climate of fear,” he continued. “We’re fed up with the inaction from the administration. And frankly, we’re fed up with all the enablers of this — which includes professors who are antisemitic and who have participated in, organized with, and even supported them financially,” he alleged.
Many alumni have pilloried Penn’s president, Liz Magill, for being slow to condemn Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on Oct. 7 and not getting a handle on the burgeoning crisis. Some disgusted donors have pulled millions in funding.
UPenn representatives refused to answer questions about the controversy, instead referring The Post to comments Magill made during her testimony before Congress on Tuesday.
There, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked her if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct, to which Magill replied only that “if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.”
When asked the question again, Magill would only add, “It is a context-dependent decision,” while inexplicably smiling.
She also claimed UPenn has assembled a task force to “identify concrete actionable recommendations.” That plan includes hiring an expert who will help the university respond to antisemitism, Islamophobia and other hatred on campus, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer.
“No place is immune, and campuses, including ours, have recently experienced an unacceptable number of antisemitic incidents,” Magill testified. “I have condemned antisemitism publicly, regularly, and in the strongest terms possible.”
Immediately following her appearance, a federal lawsuit was filed accusing the campus of being a hotbed of antisemitism well ahead of Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault.
The suit — brought by undergraduates Eyal Yakoby and Jordan Davis and filed right after Magill testified — claimed Penn broke federal civil rights law when it decided to selectively enforce its rules to “avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment,” according to Bloomberg Law.
The school has also ignored students’ pleas for protection and hired “rabidly antisemitic professors,” Bloomberg said.
“Emboldened by years of Penn’s tolerance and enabling of antisemitism, and deliberate indifference to Jewish students’ complaints, Penn students and faculty openly support and extol Hamas’s atrocities,” the complaint read.
Here’s a breakdown of events on campus which led to the lawsuit being filed and Magill being hauled before Congress:
During the Jewish high holy days in September — just before Hamas struck — pro-Palestinian student groups hosted a weekend literature festival on the campus billed as an event to “explore the richness and diversity of Palestinian culture.”
But the event — which featured more than 100 speakers — also hosted some who have been accused of pushing antisemitic agendas, including one person who called for “death to Israel.”
While Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, was banned from campus because of his outspoken criticism of the Jewish state, he gave a talk via a video link.
After several complaints from Jewish leaders, the university’s leadership issued a statement Sept. 12 in which they “unequivocally — and emphatically — condemn[ed] antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values.”
But the statement also defended the school’s decision to hold the festival, claiming that the “free exchange of ideas” was central to its educational mission.
The event sparked severe backlash from wealthy Jewish donors — including hedge fund tycoon Clifford Asness, who described it as an “antisemitic Burning Man.”
In the aftermath of the terror attack on Israel — which left 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 kidnapped — it took UPenn president Liz Magill a week to condemn Hamas, which university donors roundly criticized.
While she denounced the attacks, she didn’t say that the Literature Event shouldn’t have allowed antisemitic speakers, noting, “The University did not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views.”
After the Hamas attack, a UPenn library staffer was caught on video ripping hostage posters off a campus footbridge.
The staffer, later identified as Matthew Carson Wranovics, a library assistant for circulation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, was confronted by the person recording the video.
The witness asked him why he was tearing the posters.
“Get the f— out of my face,” he replied.
In early November, a viral recording showed a UPenn student expressing her admiration for the “joyful and powerful images which came from the glorious October 7th.”
The clip was even shared on X by Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres, who said it seemed like the speaker was calling for violence as she urged the crowd to “hold that feeling in your hearts” and “bring it to the streets.”
“This is not a patient at a psychiatric hospital. This is a student at an Ivy League,” Torres wrote.
Magill announced university officials had beefed up the police presence and called the FBI after a “small number of Penn staff members received vile, disturbing antisemitic emails.”
The emails allegedly “threatened violence” against the school’s Jewish members, particularly those working at Penn Hillel — a Jewish organization on campus.
On Nov. 9, activists projected antisemitic slogans on buildings around campus, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Penn funds Palestinian genocide.”
The incident came soon after Magill publicly acknowledged a rise in antisemitic acts on campus, including “swastikas and hateful graffiti” as well as “chants at rallies, captured on video and widely circulated, that glorify the terrorist atrocities of Hamas, that celebrate and praise the slaughter and kidnapping of innocent people, and that question Israel’s very right to exist.”
The Brandeis Center even filed a complaint against UPenn with the US Department of Education’s civil rights office that claimed “Penn has allowed its campus to become a hostile environment for its Jewish students as well as a magnet for antisemites.”
During Thanksgiving week, posters appeared around the campus that said, “Missing Cow” — and they were styled in a strikingly similar way to the Israeli hostage posters that feature those kidnapped in October.
Robert Schnoll, a psychiatry professor at the university, told the student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian that he’d seen three students putting up the posters — but they “ran off” when he confronted them.
When the paper emailed the address listed on the posters, it got a response saying the signs had been intended as “a joke to promote veganism.”
The latest unsettling on-campus incident was on Dec. 3, when hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators again flooded the university grounds and burned tires, chanted antisemitic slogans and vandalized school buildings and other businesses.
The protesters spray-painted an on-campus Starbucks with slogans like “Intifada” and “Free Gaza,” and scrawled “Blood $” in black paint across the storefront windows of a TD Bank near Huntsman Hall.
Other events spilled over into Philadelphia, where a mob, allegedly featuring students from the university, descended on Goldie, a Jewish-owned falafel restaurant in midtown Philadelphia, and chanted “Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Video of the incident posted on X caught the attention of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who called it a “blatant act of antisemitism — not a peaceful protest.”
“A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli,” he wrote. “This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history.”
Rubin, the engineering student, said he was too afraid to go to a campus lab for his final project after he heard demonstrators calling for an intifada outside his dorm room window.
Rubin said a lack of significant action by university officials has “emboldened” the group to ratchet up its rhetoric into full-blown hate speech.
Over the last two weeks, pro-Palestinian student groups — including the Penn Students Against the Occupation — have staged a boisterous sit-in at the student center that’s made it an “unsafe place for Jews,” Rubin said.
Jewish students have avoided it as a consequence, he added.
Such rallies have become commonplace on the UPenn campus — Rubin estimated one is being held “basically every other day.”
“Many students’ grades have been suffering, many students’ mental health obviously has been suffering because of what we’ve seen on campus.”