A UC Berkeley law professor is urging law firms not to hire his “antisemitic” students in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel — which left more than 1,300 Israelis and citizens of other countries dead — noting, “When students face consequences for their actions, they straighten up.”
“Would your clients want an attorney who condones hatred and monstrous crimes?” corporate law professor Steven Davidoff Solomon wrote in an op-ed, titled, “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” published by the Wall Street Journal.
UC Berkeley campus ( Justin Sullivan/Getty)
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – 2023/10/12: Students from Hunter College participate during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the entrance of their campus. The pro-Palestinian student organization Students for Justice In Palestine (SJP) held protests in colleges across the nation to show solidarity with Hamas. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Solomon, who is also an adviser to the Jewish Law Students Association at the school, said, “Anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley,” adding, “if you don’t want to hire people who advocate hate and practice discrimination, don’t hire some of my students.”
The law professor went on to explain that last year, the student group Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine asked other groups to adopt a bylaw that banned supporters of Israel from speaking at events and subsequently created “Jew-free” zones on campus. Breitbart News reported on the rules at the time.
The bylaw excluded any speaker who “expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine,” Solomon said.
Nine student groups — including the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, the Queer Caucus, and the Women of Berkeley Law — ended up adopting the bylaw. After that, another 11 groups signed onto it, the professor noted.
“By excluding Jews from their homeland — after Jews have already endured thousands of years of persecution — these organizations are engaging in anti-Semitism and dehumanizing Jews,” Solomon explained.
The law professor also noted that “the student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible.”
As Breitbart News reported, the Iranian-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas’ recent massacre of Jews in Israel has galvanized students across the U.S. into putting on pro-Palestine, anti-Israel demonstrations on their college campuses, with one student at Ohio State University even referring to the slaughtering of Jews by Hamas as “a resistance movement.”
“It’s time for the adults to take over, and that includes law firms looking for graduates to hire,” Solomon said, before urging legal employers to find out and consider which student organizations their applicants were members of while they were in school.
“Treat these law students like the adults they are,” he said. “If a student endorses hate, dehumanization or anti-Semitism, don’t hire him. When students face consequences for their actions, they straighten up.”
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