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The president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, resigned on Saturday, four days after she came under fire for her responses at a congressional hearing on Tuesday in which she was pressed, along with the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T., on whether students calling for the genocide of Jews should be disciplined.Ms. Magill seemed to evade the question and drew intense criticism from donors, students and others, some of whom were already angry that she had allowed a Palestinian writers conference to be held on campus in September. Ms. Magill is the first president of a major university to step down because of the fallout from the protests that have engulfed campuses since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.Here is some background on her decisi...

As criticism mounted of Israel’s mass detention of Palestinian men in Gaza, the government defended the roundup, saying it needed to detain hundreds of men to determine if any of them were connected to Hamas.The detentions sparked outrage after photos and video of the detainees — tied up outdoors and stripped to their underwear — spread widely on social media on Thursday.On Friday, an Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, said Israeli forces had detained men in Jabaliya and Shajaiye, areas in northern Gaza that have seen punishing airstrikes and fierce fighting in recent days. Israel has described those areas as strongholds for Hamas, which has governed Gaza since it seized power there in 2007.“We’re talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were suppos...

Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday faced threats from donors, demands that their presidents resign and a congressional investigation as repercussions mounted over the universities’ responses to antisemitism on campus.At Penn, university trustees discussed the future of Elizabeth Magill, its president, whose congressional testimony on Tuesday set off a furor when she dodged the question of whether she would discipline students for calling for the genocide of Jews.Her answers and similar comments by Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. at a House committee meeting set off accusations that they were doing little to protect their own students. All three said they had taken action against antisemitism, but critics argued they had not done enough or w...

Time is running out for the hostages.That is the message both those released from captivity in the Gaza Strip and their families have been giving to Israeli leaders with growing urgency in the days after the cease-fire with Hamas expired and a stream of hostages stopped returning home.On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others in the Israeli war cabinet met with families of those being held by Hamas, which abducted some 240 people when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7. They were joined by some of the freed hostages. The meeting was contentious.Afterward, the families released an account that included what they described as direct quotes from the freed hostages about conditions of those still in captivity.“They don’t have another second, their lives are in danger there in the Ham...