Thirteen federal judges signed a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Sharif stating they would no longer hire law students from Columbia College and Columbia Law School.
The judge’s actions were based on the “explosion” of student disruptions and the “virulent spread” of antisemitism at Columbia.
James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, appellate judges, led the effort that barred Columbia law students from clerking for federal judges. They are not new to attempts to punish students who do not uphold constitutional principles. In 2022, they launched a campaign to deny law students at Stanford clerkships after a conservative court judge was booed by the associate dean for equity. This behavior violated Stanford’s policy on free speech, but the hecklers were not punished.
Judge Ho stated that “rules are not rules without consequences.” “Students who are intolerable don’t belong as lawyers.”
Both judges started a campaign to deny law students from Yale clerkships after a ridiculous controversy with Ilya Schapiro who suggested that Biden select an East Asian judge to be the Supreme Court. “But unfortunately, [that] does not fit into the last intersectionality hierarchy. So we’ll be getting a less black woman.” “Thank heaven for small favors?”
Judge Ho said in an address to the Kentucky Federalist Society that “all too frequently, law schools seem to be run either by mobs out of sympathy, or because they lack a spine.”
He said that colleges don’t teach students to accept disagreements. “They teach students how to destroy.”
Columbia’s turn to be antisemitic is now. The judges Branch and Ho didn’t hold back.
“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges wrote. “It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”
Washington Free Beacon:
Signatories of the letter include Alan Albright – a district court judge who hears about a quarter of all patent cases in the United States; Stephen Vaden – a former attorney general at the Department of Agriculture, who is now a member of the United States Court of International Trade, and Matthew Kacsmaryk – a district court judge who, last year, suspended the approval of mifepristone, an abortion drug, after a controversial decision. Other district judges are well-known and appointed by former president Donald Trump.
The letter sent on Monday is the first official statement by more than two judges that they won’t hire graduates of an elite university. Twelve judges signed the Yale boycott anonymously.
Solomon, one of the lead signatories of the letter, has also reversed his position. He had previously criticized boycotts against Yale and Stanford for being a collective punishment. His decision to lead the Columbia boycott shows how much goodwill the school has lost due to the encampment which put the campus under lockdown.
The judges wrote: “Recent events have demonstrated that the ideological homogeneity of Columbia’s entire institution has ruined its ability to prepare future leaders for a pluralistic, intellectually diverse nation.” If Columbia had faced a campus revolt of religious conservatives who view abortion as tragic genocide we are certain that its response would have been different.
Anyone who has a shred of integrity will agree with that last statement.
