Alumnus Named UPenn’s Interim President

Posted on Dec. 13, 2023

Dr. J. Larry Jameson ’76 (’81 MD, PhD) has been appointed interim president of the University of Pennsylvania following the resignation of Elizabeth Magill on Dec. 9 after comments she made about antisemitism during testimony at a congressional hearing.

Jameson, who is the institution’s longest-serving dean of the medical school, will take charge during a tense time at the university, which has been dealing with on-campus controversies resulting from the Israeli-Hamas war. The latest outbreak occurred last week when Magill, appearing alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT at a congressional hearing on antisemitism at universities, had difficulty responding to questions about whether calls for genocide against Jews violate university rules. Magill will return to teaching at UPenn as a tenured professor at Penn Carey Law School. (The Harvard Corporation, Harvard University’s governing body, announced this week it will retain President Claudine Gay despite public outcry for her ouster.)

Jameson’s appointment was announced by the Board of Trustees, indicating he will assume the role of interim president effective immediately until a permanent successor is chosen.

Julie Platt, the interim chair of UPenn’s Board of Trustees, in her letter announcing the appointment, commended Jameson as a “consummate University citizen” and a “collaborative, innovative and visionary leader with extensive engagement with each of Penn’s 12 schools.”

According to the UPenn student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Jameson previously denounced calls for genocide as a form of hate. In addition to his role as interim president, he serves as the executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

“I want to reiterate that every person at Penn should feel safe and be secure in the knowledge that hate has no home here,” Jameson wrote in a Dec. 12 letter to the university. “Together, we create and share values that make the University of Pennsylvania an institution where creativity flourishes, innovation creates new tools and medicines, civil debate poses and addresses challenging societal questions, and learning prepares us all to make the world a better place.”

— Cameron Hayes Fardy ’23