Thirteen federal judges said Monday in a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik that they won’t hire law clerks from the institution over its handling of the pro-Palestine protests that the judges said “threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property.”
The judges said they lost confidence in Columbia since it became “an incubator of bigotry,” noting that the late Justice William Brennan refused to hire Harvard Law School graduates as law clerks due to the faculty’s criticism of the Supreme Court.
“The objective of our boycott is different — it is not to hamper academic freedom, but to restore it at Columbia University,” they wrote.
The letter suggests that Columbia engages in viewpoint discrimination, saying the school would not have tolerated conservative pro-life demonstrators in the same manner as it tolerated pro-Palestinian protesters.
After weeks of demonstrations, Columbia officials canceled the school’s main commencement. The New York Police Department entered the campus after days of unrest and arrested more than 100 protesters.
The letter was signed by two circuit court judges appointed by former President Donald Trump — Judges James Ho of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Branch of the 11th Circuit.
“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 judges wrote.
A spokesperson from Columbia University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.