The Patriot Post® · In Brief: 'Don't Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students'
Cancel culture is an unwelcome development in the 21st century. The idea that you can lose a job or even access to a social media account over something you said doesn’t jibe with what Americans generally think of as free speech. Yet free speech isn’t free of consequences, and that balance is sometimes hard to strike. Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, makes the case in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
I teach corporate law at the University of California, Berkeley, and I’m an adviser to the Jewish law students association. My students are largely engaged and well-prepared, and I regularly recommend them to legal employers.
But if you don’t want to hire people who advocate hate and practice discrimination, don’t hire some of my students. Anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley.
It certainly didn’t start with Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel last weekend.
Last year, Berkeley’s Law Students for Justice in Palestine asked other student groups to adopt a bylaw that banned supporters of Israel from speaking at events. It excluded any speaker who “expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” Nine student groups adopted the bylaw. Signers included the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, the Queer Caucus and the Women of Berkeley Law.
The exclusion of Jews remains viable at Berkeley, and Solomon argues that it is “part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible.” Therefore, he concludes:
It’s time for the adults to take over, and that includes law firms looking for graduates to hire. The law firm Winston & Strawn revoked an employment offer for a student at New York University law school who wrote an open letter that pointedly refused to condemn Hamas’s attack. The letter denounced Israel instead and asserted that its “regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary.” The NYU law school dean had issued a tepid response to the massacres, but after the student’s anti-Israel screed caused an uproar, he made a second, more forceful statement condemning Hamas’s attack.
Legal employers in the recruiting process should do what Winston & Strawn did: treat these law students like the adults they are. If a student endorses hate, dehumanization or anti-Semitism, don’t hire him. When students face consequences for their actions, they straighten up.
If you are a legal employer, when you interview students from Berkeley, Harvard, NYU or any other law school this year, ask them what organizations they belong to. Ask if they support discriminatory bylaws or other acts and resolutions blaming Jews and Israelis for the Hamas massacre. If a student endorses hatred, it isn’t only your right but your duty not to hire him. Do you want your clients represented by someone who condones these monstrous crimes?