Top law firms are cautioning elite law schools that they will not hire graduates who have discriminated against or harassed Jewish student on campus, The New York Times reports.
Two dozen powerful law firms — including Skadden Arps, Paul Weiss and Cravath Swaine & Moore — sent a letter to deans of 14 of the nation’s most prestigious law schools Wednesday. Joe Shenker, senior chair at Sullivan & Cromwell, spearheaded the letter.
Universities across the United States have been faced with a rise in antisemitism ever since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.
Graduates from these top law schools are among the most sought-after job candidates on the market.
“We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses,” the letter reads.
Davis Polk, another signatory to the letter, made headlines in October by rescinding job offers to Columbia and Harvard law graduates after learning those students were leaders of organizations that blamed Israel for Hamas’s terrorist attack.
Ryna Workman, president of New York University’s Student Bar Association, told that group right after the attack, “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”
Mere hours later, law firm Winston & Strawn withdrew its job offer to Workman, saying her comments “profoundly conflict” with the firm’s values, the New York Post reports.
In addition to students’ antisemitic acts and statements against Jewish people, college administrators have come under attack for not explicitly condemning or equivocating on Hamas’s assault that left 1,400 Israelis dead, as well as antisemitism more broadly.
College and law school officials “were late to getting that Jewish students are actually scared — they feel threatened, they feel betrayed,” said Shenker.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management has rallied Wall Street CEOs to blackball Harvard students who signed an anti-Israel letter.
“Every one of these universities, law schools and business schools have made massive recent investments in DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] initiatives, staff and faculty,” Ackman wrote on X Thursday.
“Where are they? What are they doing?”