In response to reporting that the federal government had canceled $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania because of the school’s policies allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports, officials at my alma mater issued a statement that made me wish the Trump administration had doubled that figure.

“Penn has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams. We have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions,” the school said.

The point, of course, is that Penn should have led, not followed,on this issue. While the rest of academia wrested gold medals out of the hands of their female champions and abandoned their obligations to acknowledge both fairness and biology, Penn followed along, allowing a man to jump into the pool with its female athletes. The university joined the herd.

My children completed the grueling college application process last fall and, gallingly, almost every application asked students to flex their leadership positions in high school and to demonstrate their intentions to become leaders on campus and beyond. Leadership is a top priority for university admissions departments, especially at schools like Penn, but it is no feature of their administrators’ behavior.

It was for this reason that I discouraged my children from applying to Penn and advised them to seek a school where leadership is modeled, not simply messaged.

Back during the 2021-22 swim season, the University of Pennsylvania had the opportunity to lead the charge to protect its women athletes and the integrity of its brand as an “elite” school. Instead, it chose to follow others right off the sanity cliff. It has cost the university $175 million and might cost it more as the Department of Education pursues its separate investigation into Penn’s alleged violations of Title IX law.  In total, the university receives roughly $1 billion annually in federal funding.

Now would be a good time, and perhaps a last chance, for the university to lead itself and its student body out of this institutional embarrassment by issuing a different kind of statement.

It might also be the time for Lia Thomas, Penn’s formerly feted, biologically male, transgender swimmer to show some leadership. He should, in my opinion, return his medals to the women he bested in a show of graciousness and in compliance with the education department’s request last February that all titles, records, and awards that went to transgender female athletes be restored to their rightful female owners. He helped strip Penn of significant funding and can now help to prevent further financial penalties from affecting Penn’s research labs, faculty, and future students.

Alumni will be following along (in the best sense of that term) to see if there is any leadership left at Penn.