NY Times: Sullivan & Cromwell Will Use Background Checks To Weed Out Antisemitic Prospective Hires

New York Times, A Wall Street Law Firm Wants to Define Consequences of Israel Protests:

For as long as students at colleges across the United States have protested the war in Gaza, they’ve drawn the fury of some of the financial world’s mightiest figures — investors, lawyers and bankers — who have flexed their financial power over universities, toppling school leaders in the process.

It didn’t stop the students. The protests intensified this year until campuses emptied out for the summer.

Now, a prominent Wall Street law firm is taking a more direct approach with protesters. Sullivan & Cromwell, a 145-year-old firm that has counted Goldman Sachs and Amazon among its clients, says that, for job applicants, participation in a protest — on campus or off — could be a disqualifying factor.

The firm is scrutinizing students’ behavior with the help of a background check company, looking at their involvement with pro-Palestinian student groups, scouring social media and reviewing news reports and footage from protests. It is looking for explicit instances of antisemitism as well as statements and slogans it has deemed to be “triggering” to Jews, said Joseph C. Shenker, a leader of Sullivan & Cromwell.

Candidates could face scrutiny even if they weren’t using problematic language but were involved with a protest where others did. The protesters should be responsible for the behavior of those around them, Mr. Shenker said, or else they were embracing a “mob mentality.” Sullivan & Cromwell wouldn’t say if it had already dropped candidates because of the policy.

“People are taking their outrage about what’s going on in Gaza and turning it into racist antisemitism,” Mr. Shenker said.

Private employers in the United States can hire whom they want, with only a few restrictions meant to prevent discrimination. Some have fired workers over their actions or statements since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Sullivan & Cromwell’s policy stands out because of the way it holds applicants accountable for the actions of others, and considers commonly used protest slogans to be out of bounds. No other law firm on Wall Street has publicly discussed a similar policy toward protesters, but leaders at four of Sullivan & Cromwell’s elite rivals privately said they are considering adopting similar rules.

To Sullivan & Cromwell’s critics, the policy is an effort to silence criticism of Israel on campus and to paint all protesters as equivalent to those who have been heckling and threatening Jewish students.

“When we went through big law recruitment, we knew your social media better be clean, you better not have on there anything that you can’t defend, you have to be a respectable person to be able to get a job at any of these places,” said Rawda Fawaz, a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “That has always been the practice. Why do you have to have a special policy on this?” ...

Sullivan & Cromwell’s screening will take place after students apply for a job or arrange for an interview through top law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and New York University. The firm has engaged a background check company, HireRight, to scour social media and recordings of public appearances for statements or actions about the conflict. Applicants will also be asked to list student groups they have joined.

Participation at a protest or involvement in a group that Sullivan & Cromwell finds objectionable will prompt questioning. Applicants will have to explain their role, including what they did to stop other protesters from making offensive or harassing statements.

National Review, Wall Street Law Firm Adopts Hiring Policy to Weed out Antisemites

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• New York Times, Big Law Firms Warn T14 Law Schools About Antisemitism (Nov. 2, 2023)
• Wall Street Journal, A Warning To Law Schools On Anti-Semitism (Nov. 3, 2023)
• National Law Journal, Sullivan & Cromwell To Ramp-Up Vetting Of New Hires Amid Wave Of Pro-Palestinian Protests (May 13, 2024)
• Vivia Chen, Sullivan & Cromwell's New Hiring Policy Is Problematic (May 24, 2024)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to legal education posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.