Former Penn board chair reveals new details from inside the boardroom leading to President Liz Magill’s resignation

Two days after former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill’s fateful 2023 testimony before a congressional committee probing antisemitism on campus, many members of Penn’s board of trustees were in a panic.

At private meetings, some suggested “disciplining students and even tenured faculty — regardless of whether existing campus rules allowed for that” and formally reprimanding Magill even while planning to keep her in the role, former Penn board chair Scott L. Bok writes in his book, Surviving Wall Street: A Tale of Triumph, Tragedy and Timing, to be released May 6.

Others, apart from management, wanted to issue a “values statement” in response to a question from U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) to Magill about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Penn’s code of conduct. (“It is a context-dependent decision,” Magill had answered.)

Instead, Magill resigned. So did Bok, in what was the final chapter that fall 2023 semester in the battle for control of Penn, one that played out in the shadow of New York’s Wall Street, where some wealthy current and former trustees, including Bok, worked.

“Ultimately, what I saw at stake was nothing short of the soul of the university,” Bok wrote in the preface, “and perhaps by extension the soul of all leading universities.”

Bok’s prediction could not have been more on target, as the country’s elite universities, including Penn, have been scrutinized and targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent months. Harvard is fighting an attempt by the federal government to dictate the private university’s disciplinary, admissions, and hiring policies; in response, the administration has halted more than $2 billion of its federal funding. The Trump administration also has paused $175 million in funding to Penn because it allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete several years ago.

» READ MORE: Former Penn board chair’s new book offers inside look at the battle that led to his and Liz Magill’s resignation

“In some ways, Penn was sort of where the first shots were fired in a war on elite universities,” Bok said during an interview, looking back on that semester, “and the way it’s played out, I don’t think anybody can think that what I wrote is at all an overstatement in terms of what’s at stake.”

Bok said in the interview he was troubled by the governmental intrusion into universities and admired Harvard for standing up to Trump.

“I hope Penn and others will do likewise,“ he said.

Most of the book — which had been in the works long before controversy erupted at Penn — is about Bok’s life and career as a Wall Street investment banker, through the dot-com crash, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Bok writes about the “dramatic transformation” he witnessed in his longtime leadership position at Greenhill & Co., which specializes in mergers and acquisitions.

But the final two chapters focus on his leadership of the Penn board, including efforts to oust both him and Magill.

Other revelations from the 505-page book include:

» READ MORE: Critics in an uproar over speakers at this weekend’s Palestine Writes literature festival held at Penn

Bok and Magill are scheduled to talk at a book event at the New York Public Library on May 5.

Here are other highlights about Penn from the book:

Bok, a Grand Rapids, Mich., native and son of a telephone lineman who described himself as “a straitlaced Brooks Brothers wannabe from the Midwest,” got his first Penn degrees in 1981, a bachelor’s in political science and another in economics from Wharton, followed by a Penn law degree in 1984. He had served on Penn’s board since 2005 and became its chair in July 2021.

Both his children attended Penn, as did his wife.

Given his career at Greenhill, where he spent 28 years, 16 as CEO, he was no stranger to high-powered brokering.

“Having spent a lifetime advising corporations on merger deals, dissident shareholder attacks and assorted boardroom controversies, the nature of that highly publicized contest was familiar to me,” he wrote. “The same people — titans of the world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity and hedge funds — were involved."

That included billionaire donor Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management in New York, who launched the effort to oust Magill.

Before the controversy, Bok said, he’d had limited interaction with Rowan, who had resigned earlier from the trustees board because he was taking on a larger role at United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York.

» READ MORE: Who is Marc Rowan, the billionaire Wharton grad who led the campaign to topple Penn’s leaders?

“I knew his attendance record had already been weak relative to most other trustees, so was not surprised by his decision,” Bok wrote.

But then came the Palestine Writes controversy. Before that, trustees, including a significant conservative contingent, largely kept political views to themselves, Bok said.

Rowan, who still led the Wharton advisory board, spearheaded criticism of Penn’s response to complaints of antisemitism, even writing daily emails to all trustees. Bok said it soon became clear that Rowan’s agenda was bigger: Rowan told Bok that diversity efforts had gone too far and conservative speech was constrained, and spoke of “the broken alumni bargain.”

» READ MORE: Penn’s donor backlash raises questions about how much influence philanthropists should have

“By that, I presumed he meant the notion that by being a reasonably generous benefactor one would see one’s children and grandchildren admitted,” Bok wrote.

As Rowan’s campaign continued, Bok wrote, he received more hostile emails than ever before.

“The only leading you are doing is toward a second Holocaust,” one emailer wrote.

He was even accosted during an event at the American Museum of Natural History by a high-profile bond trader who yelled “you don’t care if a Jewish kid dies on that campus,” Bok wrote.

Attacks were aimed at Bok’s $550 million pending deal to sell Greenhill. And a trustee warned Magill about an alumni text group talking about using the General Corporation Law of Delaware, where Greenhill was incorporated, “to make a so-called ‘books and records’ request,” which could be aimed at accessing information for harassment or negative publicity.

“The trustee,” Bok wrote, “providing this heads up ended his email with a broader warning: If someone were inclined to be very belligerent, they wouldn’t stop with Scott. They’d buy 1 share in every business associated with any Penn trustee and then run the same gambit at scale.”

“In the end, that didn’t happen, but people were talking about things like that,” Bok said.

The Greenhill deal ultimately went through.

Of Magill, who had been provost at the University of Virginia before coming to Penn, he wrote: “What was uniquely appealing to me about Liz was her warm, authentic, accessible approach to leadership, which was undoubtedly rooted in her upbringing in Fargo, North Dakota. … She showed a human touch unusual among senior executives by insisting on picking up myself and another committee member at the Charlottesville airport in her family SUV for a casual discussion over dinner at a crowded restaurant near UVA.”

He said if any of three things had not occurred in the fall of 2023, she could have remained president. Those were: the controversy over the Palestine Writes festival, Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent tension it caused on campuses, and her congressional testimony.

» READ MORE: University of Virginia provost will replace Amy Gutmann as Penn’s next president

“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill said when asked repeatedly if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct.

Following a “frenetic” day of board meetings after the hearing, Bok said, he called Magill and said her presidency had to end.

“This was not a case of my handing down a guilty verdict,” he wrote. “… She was a new president caught in the crossfire of a culture war not of her making.”

Magill, he wrote, had come to the same conclusion.

After informing the board of Magill’s resignation, Bok, frustrated by “the collapse of confidentiality and break down of the board into factions,” told them he was resigning, too.

“I wish you the best. It has been an honor to serve,” he said, then abruptly tapped his iPad screen to exit the call.

A colleague later called it “one of the great f— yous of all time,” he wrote.