The international law firm Sidley Austin has caused a stir after retracting internship offers to nearly 25 Harvard Law School students in an apparent show of solidarity with Palestine. The students had been offered roles in the firm’s offices in New York and Washington, D.C., but were deemed ineligible for employment when they failed to withdraw their signatures from a letter of support for Palestinians last summer.
The controversial incident dates back to July 2020, when Harvard Law students submitted a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that called for an end to the human rights violations in Palestine. The letter, penned by a student group called Palestine Advocacy Project, also called on the UNHRC to investigate an Israeli airstrike that killed several Palestinian children.
The students who signed their names to the letter, including those who had already been offered internships with Sidley Austin, became the target of a sustained and aggressive lobbying campaign that put pressure on the firm to rescind the offers. In December, those efforts bore fruit when Sidley Austin officially retracted internship offers to virtually all of the students who had signed the letter.
The backlash against Sidley Austin has been fierce, with many calling the move an attack on free speech and academic freedom. Harvard Law School sent a statement to the firm highlighting the “very serious concerns” the incident has raised about discrimination. Several other law firms have come out in support of Sidley Austin’s right to revoke the offers but have also criticized the firm’s reasoning and execution.
The controversy is likely to continue, as many feel Sidley Austin’s actions undermined students’ rights and set a dangerous precedent for future generations. The dispute has exposed the stark political divisions on campus and has prompted a nationwide debate about the intersection of employment law, free speech, and political advocacy. This incident is sure to be a source of heated discussion for some time to come.