Hot on the heels of Harvard President Claudine Gay trying to clarify her disastrous Congressional testimony comes University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill with a somber, groveling video trying to clarify her own disastrous congressional testimony. In the video, Magill has the hangdog look of someone who's heard an earful from outraged donors about her very public failure to acknowledge the threats being made against Penn's Jewish students. 

As RedState reported on Tuesday, Gay and Magill faced fierce grilling in front of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, whose members wanted to know what the schools were doing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from the violent threats being made against them. Both women, along with MIT President Sally Kornbluth, repeatedly failed to condemn the actions of pro-Hamas elements on their campuses, much to the dismay of many prominent donors. Calls for their resignations came in hot and fast.

Gay issued a statement saying the threats against Jews by the Intifada crowd in Cambridge were "vile" and that "those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account." She provided no details on what that entails.

Magill, too, was scant on details of how the blatant antisemitism sweeping her campus would be dealt with, and she has the look of someone who's realized a day too late that she royally screwed the pooch.

WATCH:

A Video Message from President Liz Magill pic.twitter.com/GlPE3QZU4P

— Penn (@Penn) December 6, 2023

Would it be too much to ask someone to get her a better teleprompter so that she can actually look directly into the camera and perhaps come across a little more sincerely? Here's a bit of what Magill said in the video:

There was a moment during yesterday's congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies. In that moment, I was focused on our University's long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which says the speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused, but should have been, on the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple. I want to be clear. A call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening. Deeply so. It is intentionally meant to terrify a people who have been subjected to pogroms and hatred for centuries and were victims of mass genocide in the Holocaust. In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.

So, these weren't her views yesterday? If they were her views, why didn't she make them public when all the cameras were on her? This woman runs one of the most prestigious universities in the country and she just today realized that Jews have been persecuted for millennia? 

And isn't it fun to watch college commies hide behind the Constitution to explain away their tolerance for the harassment of certain types of people?

Magill went on to say that campus policies dealing with the vocal hatred of one group for another group need to be "clarified and evaluated" and that she will "immediately convene a process to do so." Just like with Claudine Gay, Magill said lots of words and initiated very little action. This convening of a process isn't likely to make the terrorized Jewish students feel one bit safer. 

What are we to make of these ineffectual statements made by Gay and Magill? Have these two women taken the time to reflect on the inadequacies of their leadership abilities? Did they recognize within 24 hours that they have utterly failed the Jews and Israelis on their campuses? Was there an actual epiphany and are they truly committed to seeing that harsh penalties are meted out to those calling for genocide?

Of course not, they're just trying to save their jobs. It can be said with reasonable certainty that both women spoke out to placate donors in the hopes that it will be just enough to save their hides. Whether or not they have the fortitude to make good on their promises to address the antisemitism remains to be seen.

Stay tuned for the self-flagellation sure to come from MIT's Sally Kornbluth. Like Gay and Magill, she'd really like to keep her cushy gig.