Thirteen federal judges—appellate Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, Matthew Solomson of the U.S Court of Federal Claims, District Judges Alan Albright and Matthew Kacsmaryk, Stephen Vaden, who sits on the United States Court of International Trade; plus judges David Counts, James W. Hendrix, Jeremy D. Kernodle, Tilman E. Self, III, Brantley Starr, Drew B. Tipton and Daniel M. Traynor—have all announced in a letter to Columbia University’s president, that beginning with the entering class of 2024, they “will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students.”
“Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, Columbia University has become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the Nation, ” the letter begins. “Disruptors have threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property. As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary, we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education. Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry. As a result, Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”
After suggesting measures that need to be taken to restore trust in the institution, the judges conclude, “Recent events demonstrate that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution of Columbia has destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country. Both professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry. Significant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in Columbia.”
It is a responsible, powerful, and much needed response, both to the institution and the students who have demonstrated both an absence of critical thinking and judicious temperament as well basic respect for their fellow students, liberal education, and the law.
Now do Harvard.
Ethics Alarms 
Awesome!!!
Are they saying the class that enters in 2024 or the class that graduates 2024? If it is the former than I view this as virtue signaling. If it is the latter, than ok to a degree. Would this not be rendering a verdict of guilty by association, unless if in fact ALL the students were demonstrating. What about the Jewish students and others who are the victims of the shenanigans?
“Considering recent events, and absent extraordinary change, we will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”
The letter says “beginning with the entering class of 2024”. I admit it seems extreme, but I can sympathize with the judges’ position. From a practical standpoint, it’s easier to just ban the whole class from 2024 onward, rather than sort through each resume and social media presence for signs of toxic wokeness. From an ideological standpoint, Columbia needs to feel the sting from this, not just in the pocketbook but in the social element as well. They let the inmates run the asylum and now they have to pay the penalty. Only then, if at all, will they learn.
As for the students that didn’t take part in any rioting, they can still get jobs in small law firms, and they have extra incentive to stay FAR away from the lunatics and their ideology. Also, prospective students should take a good long look at the colleges they apply to. Columbia has had these kind of issues for a while now: https://legalinsurrection.com/tag/columbia-university/page/9/
Well, it could be virtue-signaling. However, we are at the end of the school year and job offers may have already gone out to graduating students who have taken no part in protests. Do they punish all students or do they punish the college?
My feeling here is that the judges want to punish the college and that doesn’t happen by barring graduating students or undergraduate students who’ve already paid their tuition or our taxpayer dollars to the school. The judges can very well check social media (for these foolish protesters also have little sense in how what they are doing now can affect their futures) to find out what current job applicants have been up to in order to weed out potential troublemakers.
Punishing the college by warning anyone thinking of going to Columbia to spend their money (or our money, as the case may be) elsewhere is likely what they hope to accomplish by their letter. Hit them where it hurts the most when it matters most.
Unfortunately, for every member of the legal community who thinks that what the students at Columbia are doing is wrong, there are two or three more who think they are heroes. Academics is filled to the brim with professors who came to be in the protest community that dominated college campuses now more than 50 years ago and those that they hired and promoted. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone on any college campus who disagrees with that idea.
This has been ongoing for a while, but now it’s reaching the point where academia is becoming simply about indoctrination and not about learning anything. The dutiful eagle scout or relatively innocent 4-H student who enters one of these environments now learns quickly that you have to be liberal just to survive. General Lew Wallace wrote the book that became the famous movie starring Charlton Heston known as Ben-Hur. In the story, the hero’s best friend Masada (in some versions of the story it’s implied that they might be more) goes to Rome to complete his education. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he returns as essentially a Roman, and becomes an oppressor of his own people.
It should not come as a surprise if you send your child to one of these indoctrination tanks that he or she comes back as thoroughly indoctrinated. Don’t be surprised if you sit down to that first Thanksgiving dinner since your child went away to college and they start hitting you with all the nonsense about how this is an offensive holiday because it represents colonialism or they start talking about Krappernick once you turn on the football game. Don’t be any more surprised if you receive a letter from the college that your child has been arrested for participating in a disruptive protest that went too far.
Here’s what I don’t understand: people go to college with the idea that when they finish they will be able to be functioning members of society. There really isn’t much room in actual society for people who act disruptively and think that everything can be accomplished by acting like a loud and anarchistic bully, especially when Mom and Dad aren’t paying the bills anymore. Some of these students who went too far are being expelled. What possible value can they be to society at this point? more to the point, what do they think they are going to do? How do they think they are even going to live? I’m sure some of the parents will not continue to finance this irresponsible lifestyle, and I think there’s a really good chance that some of these now former students will find themselves in the street with nowhere to go and no prospects. That said, maybe a couple of years as a homeless bum will deliver a powerful dose of reality.
I have to ask, just what kind of world do these radicals offer and what makes them think others would want to live in it? The first question answers itself. What they offer is a world of ragged totalitarianism where a few bossy visionaries and their hangers-on control everything and there is simply no room for those who disagree. They literally seem to be moving towards a world where ultimately the last conservative will be hung by the guts of the last Jew. they have moved beyond toppling statues or changing symbols at this point. They want those who disagree with them gone, and they don’t care how. I didn’t think that it would get this far, but I guess I was wrong.
I thought things had finally settled down after 2020 and this country wanted to return to normalcy. That’s why this country elected Biden to be the 46th president, correct? He was supposed to bring back normalcy after the chaos of the Trump years. Now he is the one who looks like a chaos manager because he hasn’t even tried to manage any of the problems that this country has. The same folks who stirred up all the trouble four years ago have not decided to head home, put on some Beyonce, and crack open a few cold ones. They are still out there and they have been emboldened by the lack of enforcement and the double standards. Now a bunch of them are starting to turn on Biden, because he is, or at least his handlers are aware that Israel is a key ally of this country and can’t simply be abandoned, while Hamas is a terrorist group and can’t be allowed to get away with what they did on October 7th. To these people, Israel is no better than the European empires who colonized Africa, India, and a good chunk of the far East. They don’t know the history and they don’t want to know it, some of them even call it Zionist misinformation. yet if I was to point out that Arabs come from Arabia and acquired pretty much every other nation that we now consider Arab by conquest, or that the Turks come from Central Asia originally and do not belong to the land now known as Turkey but once called Anatolia, these same people at best would shrug and say so what, at worst would accuse me a spreading misinformation. These judges are courageous, but much more needs to be done to send the message that orderly Society will not tolerate this kind of behavior. I think you want me gone
“What possible value can they be to society at this point? more to the point, what do they think they are going to do? How do they think they are even going to live?”
Easy. They’ll start by working for an NFP or NGO, then run for office.
That is probably a possibility. However, they could end up like Bernie and spend years driving a Volkswagen with non-functional wipers and getting their electricity turned off a lot before they land something.
What possible value can they be to society at this point?
None. None whatsoever.
Too bad we can’t ask John Jay his thoughts. Seems counter-productive. You could have an outstanding lawyer-clerk who hits every desired gate but exclude him for a legacy decision. Students starting at Columbia (well, most everywhere) in August started the process 2 years ago. I’ll let more informed people tell me if Columbia students should or do care.
In an ideal world there is no collateral damage. Unfortunately, we do not live in one. The logic of not doing something drastic when challenged to shorten the length of the conflict is no different than calling for proportional responses to military attacks.
If the student is potentially that outstanding he or she would have anticipated the potential of such an exclusion. I would be hard pressed to believe that the outstanding student was unaware of the campus culture when making his or her decisions. That is what most students focus on when they are choosing colleges.
Maybe I’m not giving students enough credit, I don’t see how anyone could have anticipated this potential exclusion. It’s probably minimal impact though…it’s 13 out of how many?
A couple of the judges who signed that letter had made the same announcement regarding Yale Law School in 2022.
Thank you. So ethically you give this act a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I’m willing to be educated. No retribution, I am seeing this from a parent’s point of view and have no other frame of reference. I realize due to the number lawyers who graduate every year this is probably a nothingburger.
OT, any idea why WordPress keeps wanting me to enter my password when I haven’t logged out?
Harvard, NYU, Columbia, UCLA, USC, Stanford, Georgetown… They are all just as bigoted, just as ideological, and just as bereft of any education or thought as Columbia is. They need to do them ALL. Of course, this is ALL the ‘top’ law schools. Why do you think we keep seeing these Biden appointees who are completely partisan and either blatantly ignorant of the law or openly hostile to it? That is all there is. It is because ALL the law schools and ALL the law school faculty are like this. A student who actually believes in the Constitution and traditional individual rights would be failed out of any law school today. So, what do you do about it?
You have to get rid of all the law schools, all the bar associations, all the accreditation bodies, and all the current lawyers and judges. That isn’t going to happen unless society collapses.
Mainstream America is surprised by the intensity and magnitude of the Jew/Israel/USA hating campus demon-strations, but this may just be the tip of the iceberg. How many true believers have entered our country illegally because of the Obama/Biden open borders policy? You know, the type of militant Muslim who willingly martyrs themself so they can enjoy some afterlife intimacy. Phase two will make the vandalism, disruption, and intimidation look like a frat party that got out of hand. No doubt they’re here and highly motivated, just awaiting orders. Nah, that would never happen. I’m just being paranoid right?
A distant cousin is married to a federal district court judge in New Haven. She’s a graduate of Boston University law school, but only hires clerks from Ivy League law schools, and says so in so many words. I don’t see her doing any differently under any circumstance. In the cousin’s family, she’s known as “The Queen.”