Since American college students have been protesting the war in Gaza, they have drawn the ire of some of the most influential figures in the financial world – investors, lawyers and bankers – who have wielded their financial power over universities, toppling school leaders in the process.
That didn’t stop the students. The protests intensified this year, until campuses emptied for the summer.
Now, a major Wall Street law firm is taking a more direct approach with the protesters. Sullivan & Cromwell, a 145-year-old firm that includes Goldman Sachs and Amazon among its customersclaims that for job applicants, participation in an anti-Israel demonstration – on or off campus – could be a disqualifying factor.
The firm screens students with the help of a background-checking firm, examining their involvement in pro-Palestinian student groups, scouring social media and reviewing news reports and images of the protests. It looks for explicit instances of anti-Semitism as well as statements and slogans that it has deemed “offensive” to Jews, said Joseph C. Shenker, a principal at Sullivan & Cromwell.
Candidates could be scrutinized even if they did not use problematic language but were participating in a protest where others were. Protesters should be responsible for the behavior of those around them, Shenker said, otherwise they are adopting a “mob mentality.” Sullivan & Cromwell would not say whether candidates have ever been screened out because of the policy.
“People are turning their outrage about what’s happening in Gaza into racist anti-Semitism,” Shenker said.
In the United States, private employers can hire whomever they want, with only a few restrictions designed to prevent discrimination. Some have fired employees because of their actions or statements since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
Sullivan & Cromwell’s policy stands out for how it holds candidates accountable for the actions of others and treats commonly used protest slogans as off-limits. No other Wall Street law firm has publicly discussed a similar policy toward protesters, but the leaders of four law firms Sullivan & Cromwell’s elite rivals have privately said they are considering adopting similar rules.
For Sullivan & Cromwell’s critics, the policy is an attempt to silence critics of Israel on campus and to portray all protesters as equal to those who were booing and threatening Jewish students.
“When we were engaging big law firms, we knew that social media had to be clean, that you couldn’t post anything you couldn’t defend, that you had to be a respectable person to get a job at one of these places,” said Rawda Fawaz, a senior attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “That’s always been the practice. Why do we have to have a special policy about it?”
Ms. Fawaz, who worked as an associate at a large law firm after graduating from Columbia University Law School in 2022, said many Muslims and Arabs working for large firms already feel discouraged from discussing their views on Israel and its actions.
“Your political activism is part of your identity,” she said. “In some ways, that’s a good thing because law students will know who they can work for and still maintain their identity.”
Sullivan & Cromwell does not ask candidates to express their opinions in private, seeking to exclude anyone who has criticized Israel or condemned the general act of protest, Mr. Shenker said. He and others who support this approach argue that it is an extension of existing workplace bans on hate speech.
“What’s happening here is really just the implementation of basic standards of decency in the workplace,” said Neil Barr, chairman of Davis Polk, a global law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers. Davis Polk job offers cancelled regarding the involvement of students in groups that issued statements accusing Israel of responsibility for the Hamas attack on October 7.
Sullivan & Cromwell’s selection will occur after students apply for jobs or interview at top law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Colombia and New York University. The firm has hired a background check firm, HireRight, to comb through social media and public appearance records for statements or actions related to the conflict. Candidates will also be asked to list student groups they have joined.
Participating in a protest or engaging in a group that Sullivan & Cromwell deems objectionable will result in questioning. Candidates will be asked to explain their role, including what they did to prevent other protesters from making offensive or harassing statements.
The policy shows how companies are trying to influence the behavior of people they can’t hope to control directly for years, said Roderick A. Ferguson, a professor of American studies at Yale who has studied universities’ responses to student protests. Disqualifying people based on what someone else nearby may have done seems to characterize all protesters as having a single mindset, he said.
“How can we make it so that all students suffer?” Ferguson asked. Such thinking, he added, “can look like racist, sexist, homophobic thinking, and one isolated case becomes common to all.”
On the list of unacceptable slogans and statements, Mr. Shenker said, there is one that has been seen or heard at virtually every pro-Palestinian rally: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The intention of the song was hotly contestedMany Palestinians see it as a call for an end to Israeli oppression in Gaza and the West Bank and a plea for equal rights for Israel’s Arab citizens. Many Israelis see it as a threat to wipe their country off the map.
Mr. Shenker is not Israeli, but he has close ties to the country. His great-grandfather was the leader of an influential Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem a century ago and belongs to a synagogue there. Mr. Shenker was in Israel at the time of the Oct. 7 attack.
He has used his professional status to play a leading role in combating anti-Semitism and defining acceptable speech in law schools.
Mr. Shenker, 67, was chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell (his highest position) from 2010 to 2022 and is now one of the firm’s two senior chairmen. He has helped clients including Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman; and Frank McCourt, who said he was interested in buying TikTokbuying and selling everything from real estate to sports teams. He has also helped clients survive divorces and settle bitter inheritance disputes.
Shortly after October 7, he wrote a letter, signed by about 200 other companies, calling deans of law schools to urge campus protesters to act civilly and do more to protect Jewish students. If schools had done so, Mr. Shenker said, his company’s new policy would not have been necessary.
But Kenneth S. Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, which studies anti-Semitism, said the problem with the policy is that it fails to distinguish between unpopular views and hate speech. Mr. Stern, who said he believes in the importance of Israel as a Jewish homeland, believes rules like this will exclude candidates who would be valuable to the law firm.
“I’m offended by some of the chants, but that’s it, I’m offended,” he said.
