The Business Insider reports that suddenly, who would ever have imagined? Woke Extremism in the form of on-campus support for Hamas may have untoward consequences for students at elite schools like Harvard.
It started when dozens of student groups issued a statement holding Israel’s government “entirely responsible” for the violence that Hamas unleashed in Gaza. That, in turn, prompted billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman to demand that his alma mater disclose the names of students who are members of the signatory groups — even those who didn’t know about the statement — so Wall Street firms could avoid hiring them. Adding to the tension, a truck roamed campus displaying the names and photos of students alleged to be involved with the statement.
It was a strange position for Harvard to find itself in. The university has long enjoyed a place of honor among the power elite. It sends more graduates into the bulge bracket banks than any other school. Large law firms also love hiring from Harvard, and Silicon Valley loves to place big bets on the university’s graduates. Over the past three years, according to Crunchbase, about one of every 10 dollars invested in early-stage startups went to Harvard alumni.
But Ackman’s broadside exposed a deeper rift among conservative industries like Wall Street and Big Law and the campuses they’ve historically recruited from. As a new generation of graduates has emerged, they have found themselves and the campus culture they’re a part of increasingly at odds with the values and expectations of the big banks and white-shoe law firms they’ve been trained to staff. …
An investor at an asset management firm in Silicon Valley privately told Insider that he recently spoke to a hedge-fund founder who made no bones about how he approaches hiring. When a résumé hits his desk, the founder said, he skips over the sections on experience and education and instead races to the bottom of the page, where applicants list their “activities.” Then, if he sees something he doesn’t like, he will simply “rip up” the résumé and reject the applicant as a “bad cultural fit.”
For Harvard students — especially those in the business and law schools — having prominent leaders in your chosen profession openly declare that they won’t hire graduates who hold political views they disagree with is not an academic issue — it’s an existential threat. …
now, some Harvard students fear that the backlash from the business community will have a chilling effect on student speech. Like it or not, they say, students have to think about how expressing their views could affect their financial and professional prospects. That’s especially true when Wall Street billionaires are posting on X, formerly Twitter, and professional network LinkedIn has become a home for all kinds of sharing. There’s every chance today that what’s said on campus won’t stay on campus.
A first-year law student told Insider that students would be wise to think through what voicing their opinions could mean for their future employment, especially in a buttoned-down field like law. “The general advice,” he said, “is to keep your opinions to yourself for the most part.”
A second-year law student, who was appalled by the letter, likewise sympathized with fellow students who were unnerved by having their words provoke such ire beyond the campus. “There is a real employment consequence for people — and that is a scary situation,” she said. “We are all here with a lot of student loans, and we need to work.”
