Top U.S. law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia universities who signed on to organizational statements about Israel, one of the latest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.”
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.
I love how people focus on one hospital, where it's not clear who attacked the hospital, and just ignore the 6000+ other bombs Israel dropped in Gaza. I guess (supposedly) not bombing that one hospital makes Israel the good guys?
Every think piece written about who really bombed the hospital is one not written on the 6000+ other bombs. The same day they bombed a UNRWA school and yet here we still are, taking about the unclear case instead, just as intended.
By Israel and Israeli allies, neat. It's not like a war within your lifetime has been founded on lies or anything, certainly not lies our allies blindly agreed with. Wait that has happened twice in my lifetime.
"Hamas was found to have bombed the hospital" aka all evidence points to Israel bombing the hospital, including a now deleted tweet from Netanyahu's aide stating the IDF bombed the hospital, but we're supposed to believe the 'analysis' of the group that constantly lies about their killing civilians.
Riiiiiight.
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.
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.
These are people who went to Harvard Law School. I imagine they will be fine.
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…?
Yeah, was that not clear? It's not a dog whistle, I'm deliberately giving an example of a plausible scenario where a law firm might not want to hire someone who was saying "I sure do admire the Palestinian people and Hamas, with their goal of eradicating all the Jews of the Middle East! After all, the Jews brought this on themselves!"
The lawyers might be Jewish, or they might have Jewish partners, or they might have Jewish clients, or they might not be Jewish but still be against random terrorist massacres of civilians.
When you say that the Harvard Law students are essentially saying, "[…]YOUR PEOPLE are monsters", you are implicitly saying that the attorneys at Davis Polk are Jewish, and also directly responsible for the genocide directed at Palestinians by the Israeli state. I'm not sure how you aren't seeing this, and understanding why that kind of stereotype–that lawyers are all/mostly Jews, that all Jews support the Israeli genocide of Palestinians–is a bad thing.
Lol, are you okay?
I'm not saying all/most lawyers are Jewish, I'm saying there are Jewish lawyers (and clients). I'm also not saying the Jews are responsible for genocide, I'm saying that's what the law students were saying.
This is one law firm rejecting a bunch of students that made a wild and controversial statement. There are lots of reasons why the firm might have done that. This is one example. I do not agree with the students.
Is that clear?
I’m also not saying the Jews are responsible for genocide, I’m saying that’s what the law students were saying.
Yeah, no. That's not what they were saying. So, again, you're intentionally misinterpreting. You're conflating Judaism–a religion–with Israel–a country. Not all Israelis are Jewish, not all Jews are Israeli. Israel–the state–is committing genocide against the Palestinians. That's what most of the protestors are fighting against, not against Jews. So you're actually making a racist statement, and then ascribing a racist motive to the people that aren't even making that racist statement.
You're just kind of acting in bad-faith in general.
And, it's not even that controversial to say that Israel is committing war crimes; there's just this weird evangelical support in the US for anything that Israel does, regardless of how many civilian non-combatants they kill or injure (from 2008 - 2020, Israel killed or wounded 20 Palestinians for every single Israeli that was killed or wounded; most were non-combatants).
I'm not sure why you seem to think that this is all zero-sum either. Yes, Hamas did something pretty awful, and killed 1000 Israeli civilian non-combatants. So why can't you also condemn Israel for killing 2800 civilians non-combatants–including at least 800 children–in Gaza so far? How many non-combatants is Israel allowed to kill in bombings in your mind, before you would condemn them?
The Israelis are not committing genocide, by any definition. They're certainly not conducting an organized mass killing of Palestinians–the Palestinian population is one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. They're not trying to deprive them of language or culture. They're just containing them–which might be a crime, but it's not genocide.
So you’re actually making a racist statement, and then ascribing a racist motive to the people that aren’t even making that racist statement.
They're cosigning Hamas. You think Hamas is above racism?
Anyway, I was just inventing a scenario in which a company might not want to hire these people. For the record, I don't believe that either the Israelis or Palestinians are evil, or should be massacred, or that every Jew supports the right-wing Israeli government or that every Palestinian supports Hamas. But Hamas does believe it, and has said so explicitly, and by calling them brave and justified freedom fighters you're kinda taking their side.
So why can’t you also condemn Israel for killing 2800 civilians non-combatants–including at least 800 children–in Gaza so far?
Who says I can't? Allow me to quote myself:
Same goes for law students who are too enthusiastic about Israel’s violent response, nobody has to hire them either.
The situation is fucked up, and I think Hamas shares a lot of the blame for the civilian casualties since they're deliberately using the civilians as a shield. But I have no problem criticizing Israel. It just wasn't relevant to this discussion.
It just drives me fucking crazy that people think they are entitled to be hired by a company, regardless of what they've said in the past. And a key word there is "they". I strongly suspect the Venn diagram of people who are currently saying "Oh my God, Davis Polk can't do this, it's an assault on free speech!" and the people who were 100% on board with Trump supporters, antivaxxers, or people throwing racial slurs while walking their dog in the park losing their jobs is pretty much a circle. Remember "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences!"?
They were right then, however annoyingly smug they were about it, and they're right now. You can say whatever you want, but not everybody is going to like it, and they are not obliged to hire you.
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.
