Thirteen federal judges wrote to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, declaring they will not hire students, beginning with the entering class of 2024.
“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,” the judges wrote. “As a result, Columbia had disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”
If the university desired to restore its reputation, it would implement “serious consequences for students and faculty who have participated in campus disruptions and violated established rules concerning the use of university facilities and public spaces and threats against fellow members of the university community.”
“[E]lite universities purport to train not just law-abiding citizens, but future leaders,” the letter added. “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.”
“It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct. If Columbia had been faced with a campus uprising of religious conservatives upset because they view abortion as a tragic genocide, we have no doubt that the university’s response would have been profoundly different,” the judges noted.
“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,” they argued, “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.”
“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.”
