Top Law Firms Warn Schools: We Won’t Hire Antisemites

Top legislation corporations are cautioning elite legislation faculties that they won’t rent graduates who’ve discriminated in opposition to or harassed Jewish pupil on campus, The New York Times reports.

Two dozen highly effective legislation corporations — together with Skadden Arps, Paul Weiss and Cravath Swaine & Moore — despatched a letter to deans of 14 of the nation’s most prestigious legislation faculties Wednesday. Joe Shenker, senior chair at Sullivan & Cromwell, spearheaded the letter.

Universities throughout the United States have been confronted with an increase in antisemitism ever for the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas warfare on Oct. 7.

Graduates from these prime legislation faculties are among the many most sought-after job candidates in the marketplace.

“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, one other signatory to the letter, made headlines in October by rescinding job presents to Columbia and Harvard legislation graduates after studying these college students have been leaders of organizations that blamed Israel for Hamas’s terrorist assault.

Ryna Workman, president of New York University’s Student Bar Association, advised that group proper after the assault, “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

Mere hours later, legislation agency Winston & Strawn withdrew its job supply to Workman, saying her feedback “profoundly conflict” with the agency’s values, the New York Post reports.

In addition to college students’ antisemitic acts and statements in opposition to Jewish individuals, faculty directors have come below assault for not explicitly condemning or equivocating on Hamas’s assault that left 1,400 Israelis useless, in addition to antisemitism extra broadly.

College and legislation college officers “were late to getting that Jewish students are actually scared — they feel threatened, they feel betrayed,” mentioned Shenker.

Billionaire hedge fund supervisor Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management has rallied Wall Street CEOs to blackball Harvard college 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?”