Prof G Person of the Year

After a disastrous day of congressional testimony, Penn’s president and board chair resigned, and the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T. are under intense pressure. The cause is easier to diagnose than the mechanics of the firing. Over the past several decades, universities have morphed from centers of excellence into self-appointed arbiters of political and social engineering. I’ve experienced this firsthand, watching as faculty who can’t teach or pen relevant research create a weapon of mass distraction from their mediocrity: DEI. But that’s not what this post is about.

The more surprising, and illuminating, feature of this chapter in history is who actually fired President Magill. Sidenote: Before clutching your pearls too tightly, remember she wasn’t actually fired; she will just return to the law school as a tenured faculty member … who can’t be fired. Anyway, Congress didn’t ax  Magill, nor did the governing board of trustees: She was fired by the billionaire alum and donor Marc Rowan. His official role at Penn is chair of the business school advisory board. Rowan’s unofficial role is that he gives tens of millions, and that, as CEO of Apollo Global Management, he has “half of Wall Street” on speed dial. He and other billionaire donors have been challenging Magill over speech and culture issues for months.

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