Current Events Quiz

University of Pennsylvania President Resigns Amid Controversy

• Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, announced her resignation, leading to the resignation of Chairman of the Board of Trustees Scott Bok.
• The resignations followed criticism from students, faculty, and donors, who lost confidence in Magill after a hearing in which she did not explicitly condemn calls for genocide of Jews.
• The controversy was fueled by fears over antisemitism, heightened by recent terror attacks by Hamas in Israel and subsequent attacks on Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces.
• Magill will remain a tenured faculty member at the university's law school and will stay on board while they find an interim replacement.
• Scott Bok defended Magill, calling her a good person and a talented leader, and stated that she was not anti-Semitic.
• A Rembrandt painting, "Adoration of the Kings," originally valued at $15,000, was sold at auction in London for nearly $14 million after it was identified as a work by the Dutch master.
• The painting, believed to be by a student or close to Rembrandt, was actually painted by Rembrandt around the year 1628.
• Emirati sisters Amna and Hesa are creating leather goods from waste, such as mangoes and coffee beans, as part of an eco-friendly fashion business.
• Their goal is to create sustainable and environmentally friendly products, looking at both the environmental and human aspects of their materials.
• The fashion industry creates roughly 92 million tons of waste annually, and their business is part of a growing trend of designers using creative materials to reduce the industry's impact on the planet.
• They use materials like cactus leather, which requires less water, and coffee waste obtained from local farmers and coffee shops to create new products.
• The sisters aim to prevent waste from ending up in landfills, reducing carbon emissions, and promoting sustainability in the fashion industry.