Mary Elizabeth Magill (born 1966) is an American legal scholar. She is the executive vice president of Georgetown University and dean of Georgetown University Law Center.
She served as the 9th president of the University of Pennsylvania from July 2022 to December 2023, as executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia from 2019 to 2022, and as the 13th dean of Stanford Law School from 2012 to 2019.
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Early life and education
A native of Fargo, North Dakota, Magill is the daughter of Frank Magill, who served as a United States federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Her brother, Frank Magill Jr., is a state judge in the Fourth Judicial District of Minnesota.
Magill received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history from Yale University in 1988, where she served as the head of the Yale College Democrats. She received a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1995.
Career
Legal career
From 1988 until 1992, Magill worked as a senior legislative assistant for United States Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. Following law school, Magill worked as a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1995 until 1996, and then worked as a clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 1996 until 1997.
Professorship in law
In 1997, Magill joined the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law, where she worked for 15 years. A scholar of administrative and constitutional law, she was the Joseph Weintraub–Bank of America Distinguished Professor of Law, the Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor, and from 2009 to 2012, the school’s vice dean.
Academic administration
From 2012 to 2019, Magill was dean of Stanford Law School, where she was also Richard E. Lang Professor of Law.
In 2019, she returned to the University of Virginia, where she served as provost from 2019 to 2022.
University of Pennsylvania
In July 2022, she became the ninth president of the University of Pennsylvania, joining the university faculty as a Trustees University Professor and Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
In September 2023, pro-Israel Jewish groups and students pushed to cancel an upcoming on-campus literature festival, Palestine Writes, alleging that scheduled speakers—including Marc Lamont Hill, Noura Erakat, Maysoon Zayid, Huwaida Arraf, Roger Waters, and Susan Abulhawa—had a "history of antisemitism," citing past statements criticizing Zionism and human rights abuses committed by Israel. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, urged Magill to cancel the event. Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management and chair of UJA-Federation of New York, a Jewish philanthropy, circulated an open letter about the event that garnered over 4,000 signatures. Members of the Penn faculty expressed concern that donors had such a "platform to criticize an event." Magill responded to the controversy, stating:"We unequivocally—and emphatically—condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values."
Following the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and Gaza war in 2023, critics accused Magill of failing adequately to respond to antisemitism on campus. Major donors withdrew financial support for the university and called for Magill to resign. In response, in November she announced a task force and a student advisory group to combat antisemitism. The University Task Force on Antisemitism sought to better understand how antisemitism is experienced at Penn and provided feedback and solutions.
On December 5, 2023, Magill testified in front the United States House Committee on Education and Workforce, along with MIT president Sally Kornbluth and Harvard president Claudine Gay, at a hearing about antisemitism on university campuses. During the hearing, Representative Elise Stefanik characterized slogans such as "from the river to the sea" and "globalize the intifada" as "calls for genocide of Jews"; she then asked the three university presidents were asked whether calls for genocide of Jews would violate their institutions’ codes of conduct. Magill and the other presidents responded that it would be context-dependent. Her reply generated controversy on social media. She drew bipartisan condemnation from members of Congress, who accused her of being evasive and dissmissive of antisemitism. Magill publically apologized the following day.
Georgetown University
On February 13, 2026, Georgetown University named Magill executive vice president and dean of Georgetown University Law Center, effective August 1, 2026, succeeding interim officeholder Joshua C. Teitelbaum.
Social engagement
In 2010, Magill was elected a member of the American Law Institute, when she was serving as the academic associate dean at the University of Virginia School of Law.
In 2016, she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; she belongs to Class III, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Section 4, Law.
In 2026, she was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.