Revered U.S. law firm Davis Polk recently revoked job offers to three students who the firm believed held leadership roles in student organizations at Harvard and Columbia that signed controversial letters blaming Israel for the Hamas attacks earlier this month that killed at least 1,400 Israelis.
The rescinded offers, first reported by The New York Times, are the latest development in the backlash from college employers, donors, and alumni against the statements that characterized the violence as Israel’s sole responsibility. The letters—and the revulsion expressed by some in response—have set off a tense row on college campuses about free speech and privacy in which several students have been doxxed and vilified for their perceived support of the statements.
Davis Polk said Tuesday that it is reconsidering the decision to rescind offers to two of the three students who are arguing that they had not authorized the letters. The firm told the Times that one of the students was associated with the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, which jointly issued a letter after the Oct. 7 attacks saying it considered “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
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The other two, Davis Polk said, were involved in groups at Columbia that signed on to a letter saying the responsibility for the “war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the U.S. government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization.”
“The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system,” Davis Polk said in a statement. “For this reason and to ensure we continue to maintain a supportive and inclusive work environment, the student leaders responsible for signing on to these statements are no longer welcome in our firm; and their offers of employment have thus been rescinded.”
The students were not identified in the statement, nor did the form elaborate on how the students were identified as supporters of the letters.
Since the statements emerged, other organizations and business leaders have expressed dismay at the signatories. On Oct. 10, New York City law firm Winston & Strawn announced it had rescinded an offer of employment to a former summer associate who “published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Bar Association.”
On the same day, billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alum Bill Ackman called for the names of signatories to be “made public so their views are publicly known.” Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman replied to Ackman’s post on X saying he would like to know their names, too, so he could “know never to hire these people.”
Students have also faced other forms of reprisal. Last week, a so-called “doxxing truck” began circling Harvard’s campus displaying billboards showing alleged signatories’ names and faces, calling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
Colleges have also directly suffered consequences from the furore. The Wexner Foundation nonprofit announced Monday that it had severed ties with Harvard, saying it was “stunned and sickened by the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians.”
Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan similarly encouraged donors to the University of Pennsylvania to “close their checkbooks” and called for the school’s president and chairman to step down for failing to sufficiently condemn antisemitism.
