The Board of Trustees unanimously approved all agenda items at its public session on Tuesday in Sullivan Hall.
Leonard Getz, the treasurer of Zionist Organization of America in Philadelphia, spoke to the Board at the end of the public session to call on the university to fire Marc Lamont Hill, a media studies and production and urban education professor, who came under fire last year for his comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Prior to Getz’s speech, the Board approved changes to curriculum, re-elected Trustee Michael McNichol and approved additional funding for several facilities projects on Main Campus, totalling more than $10 million.
ZOA SPEECH
The Board agreed to let Getz give an “orderly presentation” during the new business part of the public session, Board Chairman Patrick O’Connor told The Temple News after the meeting.
"[The Board] agreed that if under new business, which we’ve done before, if there could be an orderly presentation, we’d allow it, because to deny it would be to deny First Amendment rights when we affirmed our professor’s First Amendment rights,” he said.
“I think it served the university well,” O’Connor added about Getz’ speech. O’Connor has also publicly criticized Hill’s comments, calling them “lamentable” and “disgusting.” The Board issued a unanimous statement of condemnation of Hill’s comments in December 2018.
“I’m grateful for the university to allow me to speak, but what matters really is that Marc Lamont Hill be fired because he really doesn’t...represent Temple University,” Getz, a 1976 alumnus, told The Temple News on Tuesday.
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