After the recent resignations of President M. Elizabeth Magill and Board Chair Scott L. Bok, the University of Pennsylvania tapped two interim replacements: J. Larry Jameson as president and Julie Platt as board chair.
Jameson, the dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine since 2011, is not Jewish, though he is now tasked with leading the school through the crisis of antisemitism that came to a head after Magill’s congressional testimony when she equivocated on the question of punishing students who called for Jewish genocide. Platt, the board chair of the Jewish Federations of North America and a member of the Penn board since 2006, is Jewish.
In addition to leading the national organization in the Federation system, she is a board member for the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Penn Hillel and Penn’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Platt is also a 1979 graduate of Penn, where she met her husband, Hollywood producer Marc Platt. (Their son is “Dear Evan Hansen” star Ben Platt.)
“Julie Platt is fine for this moment,” said Vahan Gureghian, who served as a Penn board member from 2009-2023. He resigned after the school allowed the September Palestine Writes Festival, which hosted anti-Israel speakers such as Roger Waters, to happen on its campus.
“She was the vice chair (of the board). And she’s Jewish. So, she checks all those boxes,” he added.
Jason Holtzman, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council within the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, said, “We’re grateful that the chair of JFNA has been selected as interim chair of Penn.”
“Julie Platt is a longtime leader in the Jewish community and a top lay leader in the Federation system,” he added.
Holtzman believes that Platt is “the right person for the time we’re in because of her role with JFNA and her network and connections in the community,” he said. “She has access to top-quality resources and has access to such great networks that she can use to help deploy the right resources and make the right connections for Penn to make sure they can do the right thing.”
But what is the right thing?
First and foremost, it’s having “zero tolerance for any antisemitism taking place on campus,” Holtzman said. And secondly, any antisemitism “that is taking place needs to be fully investigated.” Since 2021, JFNA has overseen an expansion of security resources at federations and Jewish organizations, such as synagogues, around the country. It launched a $130 million program that year to help Jewish organizations protect themselves.
“I think right now the community has an impression that people are taking antisemitic actions with impunity,” Holtzman said of Penn. “If the campus needs to put up more money to put up more cameras to harden security so that people can’t get away with more things, then that’s what needs to be done.
“It needs to be an approach of hardening security and it needs to be an approach of hardening enforcement,” Holtzman added.
“Universities should be the place where you can express your views and you can really unpack it intellectually. That’s not what we’re seeing right now,” he concluded. “We’re seeing a mob-like atmosphere and group think.”
Rabbi Gabe Greenberg, the executive director at Penn Hillel, believes the right thing is in a four-point plan that he emailed to the Hillel community earlier this month.
It includes the administration clarifying “which types of statements and actions are not permissible under the current code of conduct,” communicating “the proper procedure to report a bias incident,” implementing “antisemitism training and education” and reversing “the declining enrollment of Jewish students at Penn.”
Perhaps Platt will begin to execute on these priorities. But Gureghian does not believe that she is the “long play.”
“She’s very good to get through to pick a permanent president. She’s very good to come up with a plan to stop the bleeding. She’s very bright. She’s very capable,” he said. “But of 40-some people (on the board), is she the best one? I don’t think so.”
Gureghian would like to see someone along the lines of current U.S. ambassador to Canada David L. Cohen. Cohen served as Penn board chair from 2009-2021. He also worked as Ed Rendell’s chief of staff during Rendell’s time as mayor of Philadelphia in the 1990s, as a partner at the Philadelphia law firm Ballard Spahr and as executive vice president of the Comcast Corporation.
“He could juggle 50 things at one time and get things done,” Gureghian said. “You have to really scrutinize the board and see who is closest to David and get somebody like him.”
