Delegation of UPenn faculty makes solidarity visit to Israel

Thirty University of Pennsylvania faculty members are in Israel this week on a three-day solidarity tour. Their packed itinerary includes meetings with government officials, visits to major universities and a tour of devastated communities in the Gaza envelope.

The group is also scheduled to meet with Penn alumni and attend an academic conference on trauma at Tel Aviv University on Thursday, before returning to the US.

The delegation comes as the University of Pennsylvania has been caught up in controversy relating to antisemitism on college campuses since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. UPenn head Elizabeth Magill resigned in December just days after she gave testimony before Congress in which she would not say calling for genocide of Jews necessarily breached the university’s code of conduct.

Harvard president Claudine Gay, who also testified before Congress in the same session, resigned yesterday amid an ongoing plagiarism scandal which drew further scrutiny in the wake of her testimony.