2y ago

Law firm rescinds job offers to Harvard students who signed Israel letters

www.nbcnews.com

Top U.S. law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia universities who signed on to organizational statements about Israel, one of the latest responses to open letters from university groups about the Israel-Hamas conflict that have roiled university donors, employers, alumni and students.

“These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” said the email, signed by Neil Barr.

Small-business lawyer Joseph Gerstel posted a screenshot of the email Tuesday on LinkedIn. A Davis Polk representative confirmed it as authentic.

Barr went on to write, “At this time, we remain in dialogue with two of these students to ensure that any further color being offered to us by these students is considered.”

24 comments

The relevant portion of the letter since the summary emits what the law firm is mad about:
On Oct. 10, The Harvard Crimson, one of the university’s student-run news publications, reported that more than 30 Harvard student groups signed on to a letter that said they held Israel “entirely responsible” for “all unfolding violence” in the conflict
- Additional violence at this point, seems to me that's on Israel. You don't get to use self defense to kill your attacker and then also go kill your attacker's family and friends, lay waste to their home. A disproportionate response exceeds the scope of the cassus bellum, and thereby becomes unjust itself.
  
  Hamas was found to have bombed the hospital. You want to blame Israel for that? Smh.
Doesn’t sound like a place you’d want to work anyway
- Of course not, law firms are terrible. But they pay decent and in general law is a well earning field
Institutions of higher learning are only allowed to pump out cogs for the Machine, not educated people who can look at facts and decide how to act.
Fuck Davis Polk for doing this shit.
- These are people who went to Harvard Law School. I imagine they will be fine.
- School is what you make of it. But generally when you're coming out of a top law school and going to work at a place like this, you know what you're getting into, you know you're getting in bed with corporate devils who's only motive is money and power.
- Just freedom of speech in action, you can say what you want but you're tied to the consequences of what you say. No one did anything wrong here, students expressed a controversial viewpoint and a workplace expressed that they did not want to bring that into their office--it's fine. They are Ivy League law school grads, something tells me it will be okay.
- Where did you go to school that allowed you to be so enlightened and free?
  
  I'm old so remember a time when a general arts degree was a great way to be able to get a good job in a field that one enjoyed.
- "Hey buddy! So just FYI, I think your people are monsters, and I kinda low-key cheered on the murder of a bunch of them recently, and I totally think they deserved to die, and I'm tacitly cosigning their complete eradication by taking the side of a group that has that as an explicit goal...oh, and I want you to give me a job!"
  "Uhm...I don't think I wanna work with you."
  "Oh my gawd, this is oppression! Whatever happened to free speech?!"
  It's not different than Nazis or whatever: you're free to say whatever you want, but nobody has to like you for it. Go start your own law firm.
  Same goes for law students who are too enthusiastic about Israel's violent response, nobody has to hire them either. And I don't think you would mind that at all.
  
  [...] your people are monsters [...]
  ...And exactly what are you trying to say there, hmmm? Are you making some kind of dogwhistle about attorneys being Jewish...?
Just a reminder, the architects of the migrant concentration camps are all doing fine.
These kids signed a letter expressing a political opinion and are getting harmed. People who abducted children and placed them into concentration camps are doing fine. One is exercising a basic right the other is a crime against humanity.
Does anyone have a better representation of the original Harvard letter and who signed. Where I am confused is that the authoring group is the "Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee" and co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations. (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/10/psc-statement-backlash/)
So how are lawyers and other graduate degree candidates get put under this. I can't tell if folks are more fairly being punished by explicit signature, or more inferred to be a part of it by affiliation.

24 comments