As student protests continue at schools across the country highlighting the situation in the Middle East, a baker’s dozen of conservative U.S. federal judges, who were all appointed by Donald Trump, have issued a letter saying they will not hire any student who has graduated from Columbia University or Columbia’s School of Law.
The jurists objected to how the school has handled the pro-Palistinan protests, saying it had become “ground zero” for antisemitism and hatred.
“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,” the letter read, according to CNN, which was given a copy. “Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry. As a result, Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”
The majority of the judges who signed the note serve in Texas. Included among them was Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who issued the ruling suspending the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. (An appeal to that case is now pending before the Supreme Court.)
The jurists, who can have a big impact on the legal career of students, encouraged others in the legal profession (and others) to emulate their action as well, writing “Universities should also identify students who engage in such conduct so that future employers can avoid hiring them. If not, employers are forced to assume the risk that anyone they hire from Columbia may be one of these disruptive and hateful students.”
The judges said their ban will begin with the class of 2024. And as they made the case for their decision, they cited historical precedent.
“Justice William Brennan refused to hire law clerks from Harvard Law School because he disliked criticisms of the Supreme Court by some of its faculty,” the letter reads. “The objective of our boycott is different—it is not to hamper academic freedom, but to restore it at Columbia University.”
