Penn’s former president Liz Magill was paid about $2.3 million the year she resigned

Former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill was paid about $2.3 million in total compensation in 2023, the year she resigned as president.

Her salary was disclosed on Penn’s 990 tax form for that year, made public Friday.

Magill resigned in December of that year following a bipartisan backlash over her congressional testimony about the school’s handling of antisemitism. She had only been in the job since July 1, 2022.

» READ MORE: Penn president Liz Magill has resigned following backlash over her testimony about antisemitism

The university did not respond to a question on whether that would be the extent of her presidential pay or if additional funds would show up on tax forms in subsequent years.

Magill also did not immediately respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson.

She was not the highest paid Penn employee that year. Eight others earned more, including current president J. Larry Jameson, who had $5.1 million in reportable compensation for serving as executive vice president of the health system and dean of the medical school. He also received nearly $1.3 million in other compensation. He was Penn’s second-highest paid employee that year.

Jameson was appointed interim president in December 2023, following Magill’s departure. The interim label was removed from his title in March, making him the permanent president, and his term was extended until June 2027.

» READ MORE: Penn president J. Larry Jameson gets the ‘interim’ removed from his title and a term extension

Peter Ammon, Penn’s chief investment officer, was the highest paid, receiving nearly $5.4 million in reportable compensation and another $2.4 million in additional compensation.

Magill’s base pay was $1.48 million and she received a $725,000 bonus. She remains a tenured professor at Penn Carey Law School. Magill, a lawyer and administrative and constitutional law scholar, also recently was named a volunteer associate fellow at Yale University’s Branford College. She is a graduate of Yale and came to Penn from the University of Virginia, where she had been provost.

She led Penn for less than 18 months, making her tenure the shortest in Penn’s history. Turmoil began after the uproar over the Palestine Writes Literature Festival being held on Penn’s campus in September 2023, with critics asserting that it included speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks. Tensions at Penn and at many campuses across the country were further inflamed in October 2023 following Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Mega Penn donor Marc Rowan began calling for her resignation, saying she didn’t adequately deal with antisemitism complaints on campus. But the turning point was her congressional testimony, when she was asked if calling for the genocide of Jewish people violated the school’s code of conduct and she answered that it was “context dependent.”

Days later, she resigned.

Magill earlier this month reflected on her testimony during a public talk at the New York Public Library.

“I provided this 30-second sound bite that went viral and just swamped everything else about what I’d said and my record at Penn,” Magill said, speaking with former Penn board chair Scott L. Bok about his new book that discussed the crisis at Penn. “And I really regret that. It hurt Penn. It hurt Penn’s reputation, and my job was to protect the institution that I led.”

Magill’s base salary in 2023 wasn’t much less than that of her predecessor in the final year of her contract.

Former Penn president Amy Gutmann in 2021, her final full year as president, was paid a base salary of $1.56 million and a bonus of $1 million. She also received $20.2 million in deferred compensation — earned over her 18 years as president — and supplemental retirement funds, which included investment gains the money made over that time.