The camp was cleared, the campus was empty; protestors and counterprotesters have gone to internships, summer gigs and in some cases, the beginning of their postgraduate careers.
Leaving aside what impact, if any, the protest will have on global events, let’s consider the more detailed effect that the demonstration will have on the protesters’ job prospects and future careers.
Of course, that’s important too. After all, this generation is famous for its high ambition and pre-professionalism. It has the price tag of tuition to justify and loans to repay. A 2023 survey of Princeton seniors found that nearly 60 percent took jobs in finance, consulting, technology and engineering, up from 53 percent in 2016.
The desire to protect future professional plans was not in doubt as the protesters wore masks and kaffiyehs. According to a recent report in The Times, “Fear of long-term professional consequences has also been a theme among pro-Palestinian protesters since the start of the war.”
Activism has played a large role in many of these young people’s lives and academic success. From the children’s books he reads (“The Hate U Give,” “I Am Malala”) to the young role models he admires (Greta Thunberg, David Hogg) to the social justice movements he praises (Black Lives Matter, MeToo, climate justice), Gen Z-ers have been told that they have to clean up the boomer mess. refuse!
College application essays regularly ask students to describe their relationship with social justice, leadership experiences and their pet causes. “Where are you participating or fighting for social justice?” ask one essay Tufts offers applicants in 2022. What is that you what to ensure the future of the planet?
Throughout the curriculum, from the social sciences to the humanities, courses are grounded in social justice theory and call to action. Cornell Libraries published a study guide on the 1969 building occupation where students were armed. Harvard offers a social justice graduate certificate. “Universities have been saying for years that activism is not only welcome, but encouraged on campus,” Tyler Austin Harper said recently in the Atlantic. “Students pick up on the word.”
Imagine the shock of one freshman being expelled at Vanderbilt after a student was forced into an administrative building. As he told The Associated Press, what protesting in high school helped him get into college in the first place — he wrote an essay about organizing a walkout, and earned scholarships for activists and organizers.
Many of these children are still able to walk well. Some professions — academia, politics, community organizing, nonprofit work — are well served by a résumé filled with activism. But much has changed socially and economically since boomer activists walked from the streets to the workplace, many building solid middle-class lives as teachers, creatives and professionals, without crushing worries about student debt. In a demanding and rapidly changing economy, today’s students want high-paying job security.
Not all employers will look good on a camping stint. When a group of Harvard student organizations signed an open letter blaming Israel for the October 7 attack by Hamas, billionaire Bill Ackman requested in X Harvard published the names of participating students “so that no one accidentally hires a member.” Soon, a conservative watchdog group sent names and photos of students in trucks around Harvard Square.
Calling students out for their admittedly creepy political beliefs. But Palestinian protests lacked the moral clarity of anti-apartheid demonstrations. Along with protesters demanding that Israel stop killing civilians in Gaza, others fueled fears of antisemitism by justifying the October 7 massacre, tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis, pushing “Zionists” out of the camps and calling for a “globalization of the intifada” and make Palestine. “free from the river to the sea.”
In November, two dozen leading law firms wrote to top law schools stating that students who engage in what they call antisemitic activities, including calling for the “abolition of the State of Israel,” will not be recruited. More than 100 companies have signed up. One law firm, Davis Polk, rescinded a job offer to a student whose organization had signed a letter criticizing Ackman. Davis Polk said that sentiment they conflict with the company’s values. Another major firm, Winston & Strawn, revoked an offer to a student at New York University who also blamed Israel for the October 7 attack. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law urged employers not to hire students they say are antisemitic.
Two partners at the company’s law firm, who asked to speak anonymously because other partners did not want to talk to the media, said participating in this year’s protests, especially if there were arrests, could easily rob them of opportunities at the firm. At one such company, hiring managers check applicants’ social media history for problems. (Prior to October 7, students had already taken this possibility, removing campus activism from their résumés.)
Also, employers generally want to hire people who can get along and fit into the company’s culture, rather than trying to disrupt change. They don’t want politics to interfere with the workplace.
“There’s no right answer,” said Steve Cohen, a partner at the boutique litigation firm, Pollock Cohen, when I asked if protests could count against applicants. “But if I feel intolerant of opinions that differ from him, then that would not be appropriate.” (That matches my experience with Cohen, who had worked on Reagan’s presidential campaign and hired me, a hard liberal, as an assistant editor in 1994.)
Corporate America is completely risk averse. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the company is drawing a “red line on office activists.” Many entrepreneurs, including Amazon cracking down on political activities in the workplace, The Journal reported. Google recently fired 28 people.
For decades, employers have used elite colleges as good human resource proxies to screen potential candidates and make their jobs easier by making the first cut. Since the same elite school is at the center of activism this year, the calculus is no longer reliable. Forbes reported The owner began to sour in the Ivy League. “The perception of what the graduates bring has changed. And I think it’s more related to what they teach and what they do,” the architecture firm told Forbes.
American universities have long been seen as refuges from the real world, communities sealed off by themselves. Last year’s outsize protests show that in the social media-infused, cable-covered world of news, barriers have become more porous. Those who fly on campus do not necessarily pass in the real world.
The hardest lesson for the youth of this generation is that while they have been raised to believe in their right to change the world, the rest of the world cannot share or is not ready to indulge their particular vision.
