Universities are facing congressional scrutiny and angry donors over their approach to anti-Semitism

Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania faced threats from donors, demands that their presidents resign and a congressional investigation on Thursday, as repercussions mounted over the universities’ responses to anti-Semitism on campus.

At Penn, university officials discussed the future of Elizabeth Magill, its president, whose testimony in Congress made waves Tuesday when she dodged questions about whether she would discipline students for calling for the genocide of Jews.

Her responses and similar comments from Harvard’s Claudine Gay and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth at a House committee meeting raised accusations that they were doing little to protect their own students. All three said they had taken action against anti-Semitism, but critics argued they had not done enough or even promoted anti-Semitism on their campuses.

In response, a House of Representatives committee opened an investigation into the three institutions, as the president criticized the schools for failing to address “rampant anti-Semitism” on their campuses following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Committee on Education and the Workforce, said the investigation would examine “the learning environments” at Harvard, MIT and Penn, as well as disciplinary procedures. She warned that the panel “would not hesitate” to issue subpoenas.

“The vile attacks and harassment of Jewish students are not limited to these institutions, and other universities should also expect investigations as their litany of similar failures has not gone unnoticed,” Ms. Foxx said in a statement.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said all three presidents should leave their posts. “You can’t call for the genocide of the Jews, the genocide of any group of people, and not say that’s intimidation,” she told Fox News.

And Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, excoriated university leaders at the National Menorah Lighting in Washington.

“To see the presidents of some of our most elite universities literally unable to denounce the call for genocide of the Jews as anti-Semitic – that lack of moral clarity is simply unacceptable,” Mr. Emhoff said, who is Jewish.

For Ms. Magill, pressure has also increased within Penn’s community. The advisory board of Wharton, Penn’s business school, told Ms. Magill in a letter this week that “the university needs new leadership immediately.”

And hedge fund manager Ross L. Stevens said he would withdraw a donation worth about $100 million to fund the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance.

“In the absence of a change in leadership and values ​​at Penn in the very near future,” he plans to retire shares in Stone Ridge Holdings Group, he said in an email to staff Thursday.

“Mr. Stevens and Stone Ridge are shocked by the University’s position on anti-Semitism on campus,” Mr. Stevens’ attorneys wrote in a separate letter to the University’s general counsel, notifying her of his decision.

During an emergency conference call on Thursday, Penn’s board of trustees did not vote on whether to remove Ms. Magill, who had previously apologized for her testimony. Instead, they urged Ms. Magill and other leaders to more clearly articulate the university’s values. University officials did not respond to requests for interviews.

Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a non-voting member of Penn’s board, said Thursday evening that he had urged the board to decide whether Ms. Magill’s testimony reflected the university’s values.

“I expect they will meet again in the coming days, and I expect they will consider that question carefully,” he told reporters after a visit to Penn Hillel, a Jewish campus group. “That’s a question for them to answer, not me.”

He said Jewish students at Hillel told him they felt no support from the government. Some of them said they also didn’t feel supported by their professors, he said.

At MIT, the board of directors recognizes the leadership of Dr. Kornbluth strongly endorsed.

“She has done an outstanding job leading our community, including addressing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate,” the administration said in a statement to all students, faculty and staff at the university. “She has our full and unconditional support.”

Dr. Harvard’s Gay issued a clarification Wednesday: “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group, are despicable, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held accountable.”

But David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi, said the problems at Harvard ran deep and he resigned Thursday from Harvard’s anti-Semitism advisory committee, formed after the Oct. 7 attack.

Rabbi Wolpe praised Dr. Gay as a “kind and thoughtful person” in a social media post, saying most students were not pursuing an ideological agenda. But he said anti-Semitism was so entrenched that he didn’t think he could make the difference he had hoped.

“Part of the problem is a simple herd mentality: people shouting slogans whose meaning and implications they don’t know, or who don’t want to hate taking an unpopular position,” he wrote.

Reporting was contributed by Annie Karni, Lauren Hirsch And Joel Wolfram. Kitty Bennett research contributed.