Law firm rescinds job offers to Harvard students over Israel letters
A law firm in California has rescinded job offers to three of Harvard Law School’s recent graduates after they had signed a letter to the university calling for greater support of the Palestinian cause.
Pollack & Ball LLP, a Los Angeles-based firm, revoked job offers to the three lawyers on October 1, citing the letter’s contents as the primary motivation behind the decision.
The letter, which was published in the Harvard Law Record late last month, urged the faculty to “take concrete action” in the form of divestment from certain “Israeli-affiliated investments.”
The firm said that their views on the conflict are “irrelevant” to the decision, but that the letter had further caused them to reconsider their recruitment of the candidates.
The three lawyers have since released a statement of their own, accusing Pollack & Ball LLP of “attempting to silence us.” They also noted that while their views on the conflict are indeed “relevant” to the situation, the firm’s decision was in fact an “attempt to stifle the open discourse” of students and young lawyers.
The firm has not yet commented on the statement released by the lawyers.