Top law firm rescinds job offers to Columbia, Harvard students over Israel letters

A prestigious Big Apple law firm has revoked job offers to three students at Harvard and Columbia universities after the Ivy League students signed controversial letters supporting Palestine in the wake of Hamas’ deadly slaughter in Israel.

Davis Polk & Wardwell alerted staffers on Tuesday that it had rescinded the offers because the prospective employees held leadership positions within the student organizations that issued last week’s statements blaming Israel for the attacks.

“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,” Davis Polk managing partner Neil Barr said in the email.

A spokesperson for the firm declined to identify the students.

Two of the Columbia students held leadership roles in groups that signed onto a letter released by the Ivy League’s Palestine Solidarity Groups, the New York Times reported.

The other student belonged to the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, which released a letter holding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ mass slaughter.

The firm, which reps financial institutions and corporations, said it was still “in dialogue” with two of the students as of Tuesday after they had argued they didn’t authorize or individually sign the letters.

Reps for Harvard law and Columbia law declined to comment.

Davis Polk’s decision comes a week after another law firm, Winston & Strawn, said it had revoked a job offer to former New York University Student Bar Association president Ryna Workman following a controversial pro-Hamas column cheering the Hamas attack.

The firm said the former summer associate’s comments “profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm.”

“Winston stands in solidarity with Israel’s right to exist in peace and condemns Hamas and the violence and destruction it has ignited in the strongest terms possible,” the firm’s statement said.

NYU law dean Troy McKenzie sought to distance the school from Workman’s comments last week, saying the student’s message was not from the school and didn’t speak for its leadership.

Workman, who identifies as non-binary, doubled own on the incendiary rhetoric, telling The Intercept on Tuesday they will “continue to speak out and show up.”

“What’s been driving me is the resilience of Palestinians in this moment,” Workman told the outlet in their first media interview since the scandal.

“The fact that they are still using their voice, that they are still standing strong, that they are still here, and that they are asking us to continue to speak out and show up for them through this and to not let this be their end,” they said.

The move from the law firms comes after Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of hedge fund giant Pershing Square Capital Management, vowed to make sure any student who signed the controversial Ivy League letters wouldn’t work on Wall Street.

At least a dozen business executives later endorsed Ackman’s call to refuse to hire members of the student groups.

With Post wires