Penn needs to pay PILOTs, and it should consider the additional contributions it makes in the community reparations of sorts for decades of gentrification, tax breaks and expansion. It’s not either/or. It’s both.

The ongoing debate over what universities and hospitals — who aren't required to pay property taxes — should be contributing to the city's coffers gets an added wrinkle during a pandemic-triggered economic free fall.

Penn doesn’t act like a nonprofit anymore; it prioritizes research over the education of the undergraduate students it was founded to serve. Fernandez says universities like Penn are no longer “producers of knowledge”; they’re “producers of wealth.”