Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Friday morning!
Ed. note: In observance of Yom Kippur, the next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Wednesday, Sept. 27. Shabbat shalom and gmar hatima tova!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the quickly evolving situation at the University of Pennsylvania ahead of this weekend’s on-campus conference featuring an array of anti-Israel speakers, and look at how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts at international diplomacy are being hampered by the challenges facing his government at home. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Inge Auerbacher, Ruth Wisse and Ron Dermer.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider, eJewishPhilanthropy and The Circuit stories, including: Erdogan meets with Jewish leaders, amid warming relations with Israel; Biden, Netanyahu play nice in New York, ‘even with our differences’; UPenn president declines to intervene in antisemitic conference on campus. Print the latest edition here.
Pressure is mounting on the University of Pennsylvania ahead of a conference featuring an array of anti-Israel speakers that is slated to begin today on the Philadelphia campus, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Four attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law are claiming in a detailed letter to the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Elizabeth Magill, that she has failed in her legal responsibilities to address a controversial Palestinian literature festival held on the school’s campus and featuring several speakers who have voiced antisemitic rhetoric and called for the destruction of Israel.
“By tacitly condoning the inflammatory and false narratives about Israel and the denial of the Jews’ ancestral connection to the land of Israel — themes that speakers at this weekend’s festival repeatedly espouse — Penn is allowing the festival to create a hostile environment for Jewish students on its campus at a time when, even the university has acknowledged, antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault are rising on college campuses,” the attorneys write in the letter, which was shared exclusively with JI.
Members of UPenn’s board of trustees — including Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris and Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan — signed onto an open letter expressing concerns about the conference. Read the latest on the situation at UPenn below.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the U.N. General Assembly this morning. His speech is slated to start at 9:15 a.m. ET and is expected to focus on Iran’s barring of U.N. nuclear inspectors, hostage diplomacy and other malign acts, as well as the prospects for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, JI’s Lahav Harkov reports. No word yet if he plans to break out any props.
Netanyahu’s speech comes on the heels of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s comments that normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is getting closer — and a day after the U.N. address given by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who warned that “those who think peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full legitimate and national rights would be mistaken.”
This afternoon, Netanyahu will meet with Jewish communal leaders in New York. Among those present at the meeting will be Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and National Council of Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz, both of whom have been featured speakers at demonstrations against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial reforms in Israel. Also in attendance will be representatives from the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Anti-Defamation League, Orthodox Union, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Jewish National Fund, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, World Jewish Congress, Jewish Agency for Israel, Young Israel, Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America, UJA-Federation of New York and Agudath Israel. Leaders from the city’s Persian, Syrian and Bukharian communities are also expected to attend.
In Washington, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is following through on a threat made earlier this summer to “hold” the confirmations of Biden administration officials in protest of the administration’s Israel and Middle East policy, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
A Cruz spokesperson told JI that “Sen. Cruz has been clear that it was becoming impossible to advance the Biden administration’s Middle East nominees because they kept lying about their policies to Congress and the American people,” specifically accusing the administration of agreeing to “sealed secret nuclear deal with Iran” and taking “steps to rescind United States recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”
“He has imposed holds on Biden administration nominees who are linked to these decisions until they clarify their roles and policies,” the Cruz spokesperson continued, without specifying which or how many nominees would be impacted. The holds will add to the Senate’s sizable backlog of foreign policy confirmations; Cruz has also previously indicated he’s planning to put a hold on Jack Lew, the administration’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel, when Lew’s confirmation process advances.
festival fury
Top UPenn trustees protest their alma mater’s antisemitic festival

Several prominent trustees and alumni of the University of Pennsylvania have signed an open letter expressing “deep concerns” over the school’s controversial decision to host a Palestinian cultural festival featuring multiple speakers who have demonized Israel and voiced antisemitic rhetoric. The new letter, which had drawn more than 2,300 signatures as of Thursday evening, calls on the school’s president, Elizabeth Magill, to take a number of steps to address the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which begins today on the university’s campus in Philadelphia and runs through Sunday, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Spelling it out: “The University of Pennsylvania should be doing all within its power to distance itself from the event’s antisemitic speakers, make clear that such antisemitism is wholly at odds with the university’s values, and take proactive steps to ensure that Jewish students, faculty and staff are safe and welcome at Penn,” the signatories write in the letter, which was organized by the Anti-Defamation League.
Notable: The signatories include Josh Harris, the private equity investor who recently acquired the Washington Commanders; Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, the billionaire cosmetics heiress and businesswoman; and Jeff Blau, the CEO of Related Companies.
Magill’s prior move: Magill indicated in a private letter sent to the ADL on Wednesday that she would not directly intervene in the festival and indicated other steps to support Jewish students on campus during the three-day conference. Magill said that university leaders had worked “in close partnership” with Penn Hillel to “provide support” in advance of the festival and had boosted security for campus Jewish groups during Rosh Hashanah and through Yom Kippur, which begins on Sunday evening. Despite the increased security measures, Penn Hillel was vandalized on Thursday morning before a service for Orthodox Jewish community members, when an unidentified perpetrator damaged the building’s lobby while shouting antisemitic slurs, according to witnesses who spoke with The Daily Pennsylvanian, UPenn’s student newspaper.