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Profs Accuse University of Pennsylvania of McCarthyism in New Lawsuit

The University of Pennsylvania must really be getting tired of isms.

There are the relentless accusations of racism against Penn prof Amy Wax. And there are the heard-around-the-world accusations of antisemitism at Penn — accusations that eventually led to the resignation (read: ouster) of university prez Liz Magill. There have also been accusations of ableism and classism. Well, here’s another one for you: McCarthyism.

McCarthyism is precisely the charge lobbed at the University of Pennsylvania in a just-filed federal lawsuit. The plaintiffs? Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature at Penn. Troutt Powell, a professor of Africana studies and history at Penn. And Faculty for Justice in Palestine (PFJP), a self-explanatorily purposed group of faculty, students, staff and others at the University of Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit centers on a letter that the Washington D.C. House committee — the same House committee that Magill and other university presidents infamously testified before — sent to the University of Pennsylvania in late January. The letter demanded a litany of documents relating to allegations of antisemitism at Penn and the university’s response to those allegations. And the letter called out Fakhreddine by name, accusing her of antisemitism.

Whereas critics accused Penn of not doing enough to respond to claims of antisemitism, the plaintiffs in this case say that the University of Pennsylvania is now guilty of McCarthyism by cooperating with the committee and providing documents to it about them when, claims the suit, it has no actual legal obligation to do so. The suit alleges that Penn’s actions have resulted in doxxing and death threats.

The suit accuses the University of Pennsylvania of violating the plaintiffs’ Freedom of Speech and invading their privacy, among other alleged offenses. The plaintiffs are asking the court to order a permanent injunction against Penn, barring it from complying with the committee’s letter.

The University of Pennsylvania does not comment on pending litigation. You can read the entire suit for yourself here.

Comcast Was One of the Biggest Winners at the Oscars

If you’ve lived in Philadelphia for a long time, it’s easy to think of Comcast as “that cable TV company.” And it’s easy to forget that Comcast is actually a hugely diversified company and that one of its main holdings is NBC Universal. That means Comcast did quite well for itself at the Oscars on Sunday night.

Oppenheimer was the big winner. And guess what movie company produced Oppenheimer? Yep. Universal Pictures, which is a division of Universal Studios, which is part of Comcast’s NBC Universal. Oppenheimer, which received 13 nominations, won the Oscar for Best Picture as well as several other Oscars. And here’s a bit of interesting trivia for you: Oppenheimer has made more money at the box office than any Best Picture winner in the past 20 years. And what’s the only place that you can stream Oppenheimer? Yep. Peacock, which is also owned by Comcast.

Cha-ching. But that’s not all.

The Holdovers received five Oscar nominations and won one. (More on that win below.) And what movie company produced The Holdovers? The indie movie studio Focus Features. And what company owns Focus Features? You guessed it! You can also watch The Holdovers on Peacock.

While on the Subject of Comcast…

If you’re a Comcast internet customer, now might be a good time to reboot your modem. This is because Comcast says it just increased internet speeds for subscribers who use their Connect, Connect More, Fast, and Xfinity Prepaid services, in some cases quadrupling speeds. And all you have to do is reboot.

Connect: 75 Mbps to 150 Mbps
Connect More: 200 Mbps to 300 Mbps
Fast: 400 Mbps to 500 Mbps
Xfinity Prepaid: 50 Mbps to 200 Mbps

Local Talent

But getting back to the Oscars … I’ve been telling you for weeks that you’d be smart to bet on Mount Airy’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph to win Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Holdovers. And she did just that! You can read my pre-Oscar interview with Da’Vine here. (You’ve probably been pronouncing her name wrong, as she explains.)

As for the rest of our local talent, well … Overbrook High School alum Colman Domingo (Rustin) and Jenkintown’s Bradley Cooper (Maestro, duh) both lost to Cillian Murphy, star of the aforementioned Oppenheimer. It was not a good night for Cooper. At all. Cooper also directed and co-wrote Maestro, which received seven Oscar nominations. It won none. Zilch. An absolute shutout. In his entire career, Cooper is 0-for-12 at the Oscars. Gotta sting just a little.

And outside of the world of motion pictures, I’m excited to learn that acclaimed Philly chef Ange Brance is opening Kampar very, very soon.

Speaking of Philly chefs doing cool things, longtime Philly restaurant veteran George Sabatino is doing something he’s never done before: He’s cooking in the suburbs.

By the Numbers

9,700: Atlantic City homes expected to be exposed to flooding by 2050 as a result of the rise in sea levels, according to a new study. That study says that Atlantic City is among the most vulnerable cities in the country to this type of flooding.

9th: Ranking of Pennsylvania on a list of states in the country with the most expensive gas. Our average of $3.54 a gallon is 15 cents higher than the national average.

$4.5 billion: Value of unclaimed property that Pennsylvania holds in its state treasury. And there’s a new battle playing out in Harrisburg over that property. (And if you want to check to see if you have any unclaimed property — I recently found $12 in my name! — go here.)

And From the You’re-Breaking-Up Sports Desk …

The Eagles are busting up that old gang of ours bit by bit: Fletcher Cox is the most recent Bird to announce his retirement. He’ll be missed.

The NFL world reacts to Fletcher Cox announcing his retirement. 🦅💚 pic.twitter.com/W1dlZlzRuK

— JAKIB Sports (@JAKIBSports) March 10, 2024

On the Sixers front, on Friday night against the Pelicans, the starters were Kelly Oubre Jr., Tobias Harris, Mo Bamba, Buddy Hield and Kyle Lowry – still no Maxey or Embiid — and they got off to a terrible start, down (gulp) 36-15 after a quarter. It was their worst start, in fact, of the season. Woo! The second quarter sucked, too; when the score hit 50-20 at 6:40, the crowd started to jeer. By the half, they were 2-for-19 on threes and losing 66-34. Ugh. It was their lowest-scoring half since 2015. The second half was … not as bad. Kate and Alaa were workin’ hard to talk comebacks, but nobody believed them. And then … and then … a 17-2 Sixers run in the fourth cut the lead to nine with two minutes to go. At least the crowd — as much of it as had stayed — had cheered up. Six points! Five points!

Final: Pelicans 103, 76ers 95

Williamson 23 pts, 12 rebs
Marshall 19 pts (7-8 FG)
Ingram 17 pts, 7 rebs, 5 assts

Pels somehow escape with a win after nearly blowing a 35-point lead. They were held to 40 pts in the 2nd half after scoring 36 in the 1st Q. Ugly win. Still a win.

— Will Guillory (@WillGuillory) March 9, 2024

But at least it got fun at the end. On Sunday, the going sure was slow at the beginning of the game against the Knicks, with starters Bamba, Lowry, Harris, Cam Payne and Oubre; they only managed 15 points in the first quarter — but then, that’s all New York had, too; it was cold in Madison Square Garden.

The Sixers ran off a 10-0 spurt in the second and took a sturdy lead — which they held until Jalen Brunson reentered the game. At the half: 37-31 Sixers. The Knicks took it closer in the third, tying it halfway through, but it was not a pretty game. Our shorthanded Sixers hung in there, though, partly thanks to Hield’s four treys. And oooh, fisticuffs! Well, a shoving match between Oubre and ’Nova product Donte DiVincenzo, who tackled Kelly’s knee and got T’d up, along with Isaiah Hartenstein and Paul Reed. The Knicks made it tight at the end, but miraculously, this time, we hung on.

Final score today:

79 — 76ers
73 — Knicks

First game since 2016 that both teams scored under 80 points. pic.twitter.com/Ek2B4p2klq

— StatMuse (@statmuse) March 11, 2024

“A good ugly win,” Alaa declared, and so it was. Rematch on Tuesday night in our house; buckle up! Apropos of nothing, with this piece, Mike Sielski almost managed to make me feel sorry for Ben Simmons, who’s out for the rest of the season. I said almost.

How’d the Phils Do?

On Thursday, they lost to Tampa Bay, 3-2. Starter Aaron Nola gave up six hits and three earned runs in 3.2 innings. He did strike out five, though. On Friday against the Astros, we picked up five runs in the first three innings; Bryson Stott poked a homer, and starter Ranger Suárez went 3.1 innings with five strikeouts in a big 6-3 win.

A cool thing happening in Clearwater today.

Garrett Stubbs and his brother C.J. will play a game on the same field for the first time in their lives.

Baseball is beautiful sometimes. pic.twitter.com/5ofxXvgAhj

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) March 8, 2024

On Saturday, they squandered a grand slam by Edmundo Sosa and a homer by Nick Castellanos in a 13-5 shellacking by the Blue Jays. Noah Skirrow took the loss after giving up five earned runs in a single inning pitched.

On Sunday, the Phils managed to come back for a 9-7 win over the Pirates despite starter Max Castillo giving up five runs in his three innings pitched. Kody Clemens, son of Roger, whaled his own grand slam in the fourth inning of the winning effort.

Two game-tying grand slams in two days?

Sure, why not? pic.twitter.com/4Rl32HvKc0

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) March 10, 2024

They play the Yankees today at 1:05.

Any Doop News?

Sort of? They got their Saturday-night home match against the Seattle Sounders started, but the rain was so hard that it was called off 15 minutes in. Highly unusual for soccer, but probably the right call, IMHO. I was driving in that freaking downpour. Match to be completed at a future date.

And in College Hoops?

Temple was never really in its Thursday-night game against the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Final score: 100-72. Yikes.  In even worse news, the school’s program is being investigated for gambling, per Sports Illustrated. 

On Saturday’s slate, St. Joe’s (19-12) beat visiting Davidson, 89-71, behind Rasheer Fleming’s 23 points. Tenth-ranked Creighton, who knocked off top-ranked Connecticut earlier this year, started their game against Villanova with a 32-8 run but just barely beat the Wildcats (17-14), 69-67, on a last-second fadeaway jumper. La Salle (15-16), visiting Loyola Illinois, lost 64-54. In a game that was rather short on defense, Princeton smothered Penn (11-18), 105-83, at the Palestra.

On Sunday, Temple (12-19) came from way back to win its final regular-season bout, against the University of Texas-San Antonio, 84-82. Hoot! And Drexel (20-11), playing in the first round of the CAA tourney against Stony Brook, led 36-28 at the half. In the second, forward Amari Williams headed to the locker room with an ankle injury, which slowed the Dragons down; the Seawolves came within one with two minutes to go, then tied it up 71-71 at the buzzer and took the game to overtime, then to a second overtime. Williams returned but clearly wasn’t himself in what became a 91-88 Dragons loss. Tough one. Williams, BTW, was recently named the conference defensive player of the year for the third straight year.

The Flyers also played.

All Philly Today sports coverage is provided by Sandy Hingston.

I am a food writer, so it should come as no surprise that I live in my kitchen. I am constantly cooking up new recipes, and routinely go the extra mile to cook up from-scratch meals for myself during the week. Even though doing this often takes hours, I truly can’t help myself. I’m just extra like that.

Although this practice has been a blessing for my palette, it has been a curse elsewhere in my life. The time it took to cook these elaborate meals ate up much-needed time to decompress after work. In searching for a solution, I came across the Fullstar vegetable chopper, which ended up being a bit of a lifesaver. I used it to prep ingredients ahead of time, and doing so cut my cooking time in half, giving me at least an hour back during the weeknights. 

And I’m not the only one who is a fan. This product has gone viral on TikTok again and again for its ease of use and efficiency. Right now, you can get one of my favorite cooking tools for 46% off on Amazon (after coupon). Considering this product’s immense popularity, this discount won’t last long, so get it while you can.

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Fullstar 6-in-1 vegetable chopper: Save 46%

I’ve had this vegetable chopper for about two years now and it remains to be the most useful cooking tool in my kitchen. The chopper comes with two cutting inserts, a removable tray that catches your food after chopping and slicing, five interchangeable blades, a blade organizer for easier storage, cleaning tools, a protective glove, two protective finger guards and a spiralizer with three settings. This is an incredible value for the price, even if the product wasn’t on sale. 

One of the cutting inserts includes a mandolin that allows you to customize the thickness of the veggies you slice. The other cutting insert is a chopper, which can be used to chop and dice mushrooms, onions, cucumbers and more. The blades for each of these inserts are razor sharp and have remained so after years of use. They also excel at producing uniform cuts, so there’s no need to use a knife to conduct this kind of ingredient prep (I’ve used mine significantly less since getting this tool). 

The extra protective and cleaning accessories have proved to be essential, so don’t skip using them. The glove has prevented me from getting cut time and time again, and the cleaning tools, including the brush and cleaning scrapers, make it so much easier to get flecks of veggies out of the blades. This product is dishwasher safe, but after years of putting this in my dishwasher, the catch-all tray did break down, so much so that I replaced the product last month. This deterioration is normal though; plastic can only stand the tumultuous environment of a dishwasher for so long. 

This Fullstar 6-in-1 vegetable chopper has a 4.6-star rating on Amazon out of more than 23,000 reviews. One reviewer wrote, “This has saved me so much time it’s insane! I love to make a lot of recipes and dips that require a lot of slicing and dicing and this chopper has saved me probably hours of cutting! Great buy!”

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Washington — Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican, has faced criticism in recent days for allegedly misleading comments made during her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address last week, where she appeared to suggest that a horrific sex trafficking story had occurred during President Biden’s time in office. 

Britt shared the story of a woman she spoke with at the southern border, who Britt said was sex-trafficked by the cartels, recalling in graphic detail the story of the abuse of the then-12-year-old. 

“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country,” Britt said at the conclusion of the story. “This is the United States of America and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

An independent journalist, Jonathan M Katz, first reported in a viral video that the story Britt recalled of the trafficking had actually occurred in Mexico during George W. Bush’s presidency. Britt appeared to be telling the story of Karla Jacinto Romero, who has testified before Congress about being the victim of sex trafficking by Mexican cartels when she was 12. Britt and two other senators participated in a roundtable discussion with Jacinto and others during a visit to the southern border last year. 

Britt responded to the accusations on “Fox News Sunday,” defending her remarks and implying that she didn’t mean to suggest that the incident happened under the Biden administration, while saying that she had been clear during the remarks that the woman in her story was much younger when the incident occurred.

The Alabama Republican explained that with the story, she was contrasting the first 100 days of her time in the Senate with Biden’s time in the White House, illustrating how she visited the border and heard victims’ stories. She said the story is an example of what’s happening at an “astronomical rate” under the Biden administration’s handling of the border. 

White House spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement called Britt’s remarks “debunked lies,” saying the senator “should stop choosing human smugglers and fentanyl traffickers over our national security and the Border Patrol Union” by joining fellow Republicans in the Senate to oppose a bipartisan agreement to enhance border security. 

“Like President Biden said in his State of the Union, ‘We have a simple choice: We can fight about fixing the border or we can fix it,’” Bates said. 

Britt’s Thursday remarks were lampooned Saturday night on “Saturday Night Live,” with Scarlett Johansson parodying Britt.   

Britt, 42, is the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate and the first woman to serve in the Senate from Alabama.

Gabrielle Ake contributed reporting. 

How A New Center City Arena Can Take the 76ers from the Brink to Brilliance.

In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia and became the 76ers. The Nationals had been NBA Champions in 1953–1954. Their arrival followed the void left by the Philadelphia Warriors who had just left for San Fransisco.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia in 1963, the 76ers took up residence in Philadelphia Arena and Convention Hall on Market Street. By 1968, the Sixers moved to the first version of The Spectrum.

Could a move back to Center City be just what the Sixers need?

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Plans are are moving forward for the 76 Place at Market East in Center City, which is expected to open in 2031 with an estimated capacity of 18,500 seats in close proximity to public transportation and the Fashion District Shopping. The Market-Frankford Line and Jefferson Station would be available to fans, an easier destination than trying to get to South Philadelphia.

The timing couldn’t be better. Here is why:

Photo Courtesy of Philadelphia Nation on X.

Money, Money, Money — Tourists — visiting one of America’s most iconic City as they do every year in droves — will not have to travel to South Philadelphia if the arena is in Center City. And of course will be able to partake of the shopping, dining, and entertainment not only at 76 Place but in Center City.

Public Transportation — Reaching the new Sixers arena in Center City will not only be much easier for those already in the City, but fans traveling from the suburbs into town. Especially when in walking distance of the train station giving fans more SEPTA options in order to reach the arena.

And of course a Center City location would no doubt see a huge uptick in fan attendance.

Living Alone — The Sixers would not have to deal with any NHL scheduling woes if they alone played in the arena. Currently, the Sixers share the Wells Fargo Center with the Flyers.

And while other Philadelphia professional sport’s franchises have tried similar proposals like when the Phillies also tried to build a baseball stadium near the same location in 2000.

So would 76 Place be a good place for the Sixers?

Yup — it’s a great plan. For the best place.

Should the Eagles Bargain for Saquon Barkley?

A short distance away from Penn State University in Centre County is Nittany Mountain, which separates Nittany Valley and Penns Valley.

It’s actually not a mountain — it’s more well — a ridge.

Long before Europeans settled Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries, mountain lions and cougars have roamed the area around Nittany Mountain. Endangered and hunted, mountain lions were almost completely gone from Pennsylvania in the 1880s.

But every now and again — there is a sighting of the Pennsylvania species thought to be extinct.

The Philadelphia Eagles are always on the lookout for Nittany Lions.

How could you not be from a school that produced such talent as Jack Ham, Franco Harris, and Todd Blackledge?

Saquon Barkley finds open space and run for a touchdown against Ohio State. Saturday, October 28, 2017. Special to the Reading Eagle: Chris Sponagle

So it’s only fitting that the Eagles are rumored to be eying New York Giants Running Back Saquon Barkley. In college at Penn State, Barkley ran for almost 3,900 yards, had nearly 1,200 yards receiving, and over 500 yards in kickoff and returns. He was a 2-time Big Ten Running Back of the Year, six-time Big Ten Offensive Player of the week, and still holds school records for most rushing yards as a freshman and a sophomore, and the most total yards in a game.

As the #2 draftee by the New York Giants in the year 2018, Barkley was offensive rookie of the year as well as a Pro Bowler twice.

He’s not the only Eagles runner who has come from Penn State.

Saquon Barkley’s backfield companion Miles Sanders was drafted by the Eagles in the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft. In four seasons with the Eagles, Sanders set three Eagles Franchise records and rushed for nearly 3,500 yards. He would leave the Eagles after his best season with the team and a trip to the Super Bowl.

Tony Hunt was the second all-time rusher in Penn State history before being drafted by the Eagles with the 90th pick in 2007. He was named the starter at fullback for the Eagles in the summer of 2008.

Eric McCoo still holds the single game rushing for Penn State. The running back would join the Eagles in 2004 and was member of the 2005 Super Bowl team against the Patriots.

Should the Eagles invest capital for Saquon Barkley to be the next Nittany Lion runner to join Philadelphia, whose Whitehall roots saw him play his high school and college career in Pennsylvania?

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons.

Every now and again a sleak moving, speedy, mountain lion is reportedly sighted in Pennsylvania’s wooded areas and elevated terrain around areas like Nittany Mountain.

Each year, The Eagles count on it.

Longform

In February of 2022, Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel broke ground on one of the most advanced steelmaking facilities ever built in North America. When it begins production this year, the $3 billion project promises to create some 900 jobs for local workers at six-figure salaries. It’s the largest private-sector­ project in the history of the state. That state is Arkansas.

The move to build the future of steel along the Mississippi instead of the Monongahela was a gut punch to Pennsylvania and an epic fumble for the “Steel City,” whose NFL team, the Steelers, has a mascot named Steely McBeam. Asa Hutchinson, who was then the governor of Arkansas (before fading into the obscurity of running for president), danced in the end zone over his state’s conquest, gloating that U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt told him Arkansas could build a steel mill from scratch faster than Pennsylvania could issue a permit to start one.

When Josh Shapiro was on the campaign trail for Pennsylvania’s governorship in 2022, he kept hearing stories like that one — about big and small businesses choosing to set up anywhere but the Keystone State. Companies like Intel, which in 2022 committed $20 billion to build microchip factories in Ohio. The largest ­private-sector investment in that state’s history, it’s projected to create 3,000 Intel jobs and 7,000 construction jobs and attract dozens of other companies. 

While other states have boosted incentives to woo companies, Pennsylvania has one of the nation’s highest corporate tax rates and offers relatively meager funding to attract businesses.

“Pennsylvania spends seven or eight times less in terms of incentivizing companies than many of our neighboring states — specifically Ohio, which has a smaller population,” Rick Siger, secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), points out to me.

Our state’s portion of the national GDP has been falling. Population is shrinking, too; we lost a U.S. House seat and an electoral college vote in the last redistricting. A 2023 list by WalletHub rated Pennsylvania the 44th best state in which to start a business (though a Forbes Advisor list has us at number seven, so maybe online listicles aren’t the smartest way to choose a home for your business).

And the deeply mundane problem of delayed permits and professional licenses has made everything just a little worse. Amid hospital staff shortages, more than half of the 12,000 nurses issued Pennsylvania licenses in 2021 had to wait three months or longer to get them — among the longest lags in America, according to an NPR investigation. Luke Bernstein, CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, tells me a family member was a teacher in Virginia who had trained in Pennsylvania, and when she moved back here, it took Pennsylvania four months to issue a teaching certificate. Permits from the Department of Environmental Protection can take years. Zombies seem nimbler than some of these agencies. Delays can mean uncertainty and postponed income for businesses and people. “Other states are using that to market against us,” Bernstein says. 

To make a symbolic point and urge permit reform, State Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York) held a press conference (and a gigantic pair of scissors) at the former factory of York Narrow Fabrics, the company that made the literal red tape once used to bundle federal regulations (hence the euphemism).

“I have heard from my constituents countless times,” she says. “It’s nurses, doctors, it’s cosmetologists, barbers, realtors, teachers — any individual that requires a professional license from the state. We have a joke that this is the best job security for the staff in our district office. We are constantly having to help our professionals obtain those certificates and licenses from state agencies.”

Shapiro has a philosophy he calls “GSD,” for “Get shit done.“ His signature move as the new governor came when a chunk of I-95 collapsed last June and he led the effort to repair it in a mind-blowing 12 days, showing how quickly a motivated government can produce results — and just how big a hole in the road has to be to get some attention around here.

With so many businessfolk griping to him about bashing their heads against the state bureaucracy, Shapiro turned to Ben Kirshner, a tech entrepreneur from the Philly suburbs with whom he was friendly, and essentially said: Can I give these people your number?  

“When Governor Shapiro originally asked me to do this role, he said he was looking for a kind of business czar,” Kirshner recalls over lunch at a Lancaster Avenue diner in Wayne, not far from his home. “With the war in Ukraine, I was like, ‘I don’t know that I want a title with the word czar in it. But let me think about it.’”

To start 2023, Shapiro appointed Kirshner­ the state’s Chief Transformation Officer, head of the newly created Office of Transformation and Opportunity (OTO). Kirshner would be a liaison between the business community and the state’s slow-walking agencies, working to unravel knots of red tape. His unit would support Siger’s DCED, which provides tax credits, loans and grants to lure companies here. The hope is that the OTO can compensate­ for Pennsylvania’s less-than-sterling financial handouts by at least making it easier for companies to set up. Kirshner’s buddy Josh Kopelman, Philly’s preeminent tech investor, honored Kirshner’s new title with a Transformers action figure for him to display on a shelf in Harrisburg. (It’s Grimlock, who converts into a Tyrannosaurus rex.)

Kirshner had made his fortune in the speedy world of digital marketing. He’d just sold his company, Tinuiti, for untold millions of dollars after building it into one of the top advertising buyers on Amazon, Facebook and Google, with thousands of familiar brands as clients and 700 employees in 15 cities over 10 states. Digital marketing is driven by trends and surges, so transactions like automated auctions for ad display can occur in nanoseconds. In an Inc. magazine article in 2014, Kirshner wrote, “In business, it’s not the big that eat the small; it’s the fast that eat the slow.”

It was time for the transforming to begin. Or time to find out what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object.

Better Call Ben

Kirshner, who’s 46, graduated from Upper Dublin High in 1996. His parents had started a company in their apartment, CoffeeServ, that supplied coffee to offices. In the primordial days of the Web, while he was studying entrepreneurship at George Washington University, Ben built a website expanding their customer base to home shoppers. 

“My claim to fame is I’m the first person to sell coffee on the internet,” he tells me as I sip my coffee. “We were doing e-commerce before there were shopping carts. Doing live chats to check out. It’s pretty wild.” Coffeeforless.com is still in business, and Kirshner still seems jazzed about having transformed his parents’ business to thrive in a fast-paced future — maybe a bit of foreshadowing there.

At age 26, Kirshner launched an online marketing agency, Elite SEM, and it got huge. Based in New York and eventually with a Philly office above El Vez at 13th and Sansom, Elite expanded nationally, with a client list that included Peloton, Eddie Bauer and Hugo Boss. Elite increased online sales-lead generation for bug-killer Terminix by 65 percent using paid search-engine marketing (which is what SEM stands for). The company did email campaigns for Bombas, the socks guys. “We launched their digital-marketing site before they were even on Shark Tank,” Kirshner says.

The company regularly made “best places to work” lists and the Inc. 5,000 as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies. Kirshner owned 100 percent of it before taking on private equity from Mountaingate Capital in 2017. After acquiring other agencies, the company rebranded in 2019 as Tinuiti — adapted from “ingenuity and continuity” — and in 2020 was sold to New Mountain Capital for an undisclosed sum. (Kirshner wouldn’t share any numbers, but the company put its 2020 revenue at $135.3 million for the 2021 Inc. list; tech companies tend to sell for multiples of their revenue.) Kirshner had distributed “phantom equity,” a portion of the company’s value without stock ownership, to some employees. He says, “One of my proudest accomplishments in the private sector is through that whole process, I created 28 millionaires.”

Kirshner met Josh Shapiro when the future governor was a Montgomery County politico — a state Rep and then a county commissioner. Shapiro and Kirshner’s wife went to the same high school. “It became clear he was very inspiring,” Kirshner recalls. “We would talk all the time about business, technology, marketing, media. He was fascinated by business. I said, ‘Anything I could do to support you, let me know.’ Then after I sold my business in December of 2020, he said, ‘What do you want to do?’”

Kirshner joined Shapiro’s transition team in 2022, helping him select personnel. “Toward the end of that,” Kirshner says, “he said to me, ‘You know, when I was campaigning, I met a lot of people in the business community, and I heard how Pennsylvania might not be the best place to do business. We’re not proactive. It’s hard to get permits. We don’t have the best incentives.’ People would complain to him about how Pennsylvania needs to do better.”

“I told Ben that I thought we needed a point person for folks who wanted to do business with the Commonwealth — one office they could come to to get answers, cut through the red tape, get a deal done,” Shapiro tells me after a ceremony to install a state Supreme Court judge. “What Ben brought is a private-sector, fast-paced mentality to the government — that aggressive mentality, our GSD approach to governing, our get-shit-done approach.”

Pivot Into the Quagmire

It may not be immediately apparent how a whiz in customer-acquisition funnels and conversion-rate optimization is the right guy to bolster business in Pennsylvania, whose economy remains largely industrial, built on manufacturing, mining, energy, delicious candy and snacks. But business is business, Kirshner explains: “I understand how companies think, especially in dealmaking mode. I know the questions they’re gonna ask. I know what they want to hear about.” While he was growing his own company, he points out, “I saw what good and bad economic development looked like.”

One of the reasons I came to this role was that I was kind of a victim of bad service from the state. I was trying to get a document from the Department of State. It cost me a lot of money, because I was trying to close a transaction, and it was a whole nightmare.” — Ben Kirshner

That doesn’t explain why someone­ who never needs to wear a tie again would choose to commute to Harrisburg. Kirshner­ says he felt too young to retire. He wanted to give back. “One of the reasons I came to this role was that I was kind of a victim of bad service from the state. I was trying to get a document from the Department of State. It cost me a lot of money, because I was trying to close a transaction, and it was a whole nightmare.” Saving others from that misery? “That’s where I get my dopamine.”

Shapiro kicked off the transforming in 2023 with an executive order giving state agencies 90 days to document every type of permit, license and certification they issue — more than 2,400 in all. Some business-application reviews are lengthy for good reason, of course. PennDOT assesses traffic and other impacts. Environmental permits can involve public meetings and inspections, to keep our water less poison-y. The first major initiative in Kirshner’s office was working with agencies to identify whether each undue delay resulted from problems with staffing, technology, legislation or something else.

I try to get Kirshner to confess how painstaking it must have been to persuade entrenched civil servants to do that extra work to help the new guy look good, but he doesn’t bite. 

“I was kind of shocked. I thought it was gonna be a lot harder,” he says. “We didn’t really get pushback, because we approached it in a way of like, ‘Hey, we want to help you.’ They were able to raise their hand and say, ‘I have a technology issue. It’s been bothering me for years.’ A lot of these agencies looked at the data and saw, ‘Oh my God, we can fix this.’ And they started fixing it.”

In July, the Department of Education announced it had reduced teacher-certification processing times from 10 to 15 weeks down to less than one. The Department of State cut the average processing time for business and corporate filings from eight weeks to three days. At an appropriations committee meeting last March, then-acting Secretary of Environmental Protection Rich Negrin acknowledged to state Senators: “I’ve heard those nightmare stories about a permit that took four years, about a permit that took seven years. That should never happen. … When we say your permit is deficient, and it’s repeatedly deficient over and over and over, at some point, that’s not your fault; it’s ours. We’re not being user-friendly.”  

Businesspeople appreciate having an entrepreneur in Harrisburg; it’s like going to the DMV and the guy taking your driver’s-license picture is Dale Earnhardt Jr. Kirshner met with corporate site selectors, “learning from the companies that didn’t choose Pennsylvania in the past,” he says. “We talked to Intel, who famously chose Ohio. Where did Pennsylvania get knocked out of the competition? What was important to them?” 

His unit became a sort of helpline for permit woes. Spark Therapeutics is building a $575 million Gene Therapy Innovation Center on Drexel’s campus, with some financial incentives from the state. Kirshner’s­ office helped solve an issue that threatened the start of the project. “We had this one permit with the DOT that was kind of stuck,” Spark CEO Ron Philip tells me. “We were about to break ground. And as you can imagine, timelines and budgets are well connected. When we reached out to Ben’s office, it was a pretty quick turnaround.”

I talk to Mike Cooley at the Provco Group, a commercial real estate company in Villanova that buys land and secures permits for sites where clients like Wawa, Starbucks and CVS want to build stores. As we speak, it becomes clear that permits have haunted Cooley’s existence. “We are investing literally hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy in the Commonwealth, and it’s been almost unappreciated by previous administrations,” he tells me. “I felt like it was just, ‘Take a number and get in line.’” He says this multiple times.

In October, Cooley was at a roundtable with Shapiro and saw an opportunity. He told the governor how awesome it was that Interstate I-95 was fixed in just 12 days. “It was a good segue into how ironic it is for me, a private business owner and developer, that it takes no less than 12 months, with extraordinary efforts, to obtain permits from our state,” Cooley says. “No exaggeration, less than 10 minutes after he left, I got a text message from Ben Kirshner. We arranged for a Zoom the next morning. And I literally got a call from PennDOT within days of that conversation.” 

It seems the immovable object has budged. The corporate tax rate is falling, thanks to a move by the previous administration. Pennsylvania reached record low unemployment in 2023. The Shapiro administration says there’s been $1.2 billion in new private-sector investment, and it just issued the state’s first long-term economic development plan in 20 years. As I’m finishing my research, I hear about a photonics company, Excelitas, that’s decided to move its headquarters to Pittsburgh from the Boston area, with a plan to create 250 jobs in a high-tech district that’s helping Pittsburgh compensate for the decline of heavy industry. Excelitas CEO Ron Keating tells me Ohio floated much bigger financial incentives. “Ohio gave us a very high prelim number. Kind of shocking,” he says. But Shapiro, Kirshner and Siger convinced him the business climate in Pennsylvania would be better. “Ben’s a really sharp guy. I like him a lot,” Keating says.

Insiders figure if Shapiro’s star keeps rising — maybe so far as to Washington, D.C.? — a get-shit-done-approved confidant like Kirshner­ could join him on the ride. I ask the latter how his first year in government­ has changed him. He’s the transformation guy, right? “I don’t think I’ve personally transformed that much,” Kirshner tells me. “I’m asking lots of questions every day. I’m still learning. But I don’t think I’m fully transformed.”

 

Published as “The Transformer” in the March 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.