We’ve seen this happen once already (David has a post coming up about that) but today we’re learning that more students from elite schools have been told to take a hike after signing anti-Israel statements.

Top U.S. law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia universities who signed on to organizational statements about Israel, one of the latest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…

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, which came after a surprise Hamas attack on Israel killed over 1,300 people. Since the letter was published, numerous CEOs, business leaders and a federal judge have responded by cutting ties with the university, calling for the identifications of the signers or saying they would not hire the signers.

I don’t think these companies should feel bad about cutting lose students who sign a statement blaming victims of mass murder for their own deaths. That doesn’t mean those statements are illegal or outside the protection of the 1st amendment, but companies get to pick who they want to hire and not hiring pro-Hamas lawyers seems reasonable to me.

That said, there is a wrinkle here that is worth considering. The letter which made the rounds at Harvard wasn’t signed by individuals only by student groups. After the pushback began, several students claimed that they had never even seen the letter before a group they belonged to agreed to sign it. One of those students has since deleted her account on X but you can still see her statements in this post.

I don’t know for a fact that this is true but it does seem possible. And so, as we’ve just seen with the hospital attack in Gaza, it’s not fair to blame people for things they haven’t actually done. If it’s possible some of these students never even saw the letter then it’s not fair to penalize them for a decision made by someone else. And it seems the law firm in question is still talking to two of the students in question.

On Tuesday, the firm said it was reconsidering that decision for two of the three students, who fought their dismissals and said that they did not authorize the letters, which did not have any individual signatories. The potential reversal highlights the complexities — for both employers and employees — of navigating what has quickly become one of the most emotionally divisive issues in recent decades.

The New York law firm said two of the students held leadership roles in groups that signed a letter at Columbia and one was affiliated with the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, which jointly wrote a letter that held the “Israeli regime” responsible for the deadly violence.

I suspect the student who is no longer being considered had a direct role in either writing or signing the letter. The other two are probably now claiming they had no such connection to it. In fact, the story goes on to suggest they’ve been contacted by many students seeking to distance themselves from these Hamas defending statements.

The chair and managing partner of Davis Polk, Neil Barr, said in an interview on Tuesday that the firm did not want employees who endorsed the atrocities of the Hamas attack working for them.

In the past week, a large number of law students to whom Davis Polk had promised employment — from Columbia, Harvard and other schools — had reached out to say they didn’t agree with statements released from organizations they were part of that blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 killings, a Davis Polk spokeswoman, Katie Moss, said.

Many of the students also said they had resigned from those groups or similar ones after the Harvard and Columbia student groups released their statements, Ms. Moss added.

If the Hamas defenders and those adjacent to them are squirming, that’s good. Some of these young adults clearly needed to learn this lesson.

Update 1/23/24: One tweet and a reference to it has been removed. This tweet didn’t involve any of the people directly connected to the actions being criticized.