Business Owners Refuse to Hire Columbia Grads After Pro-Palestinian Protest

Some business owners are expressing opposition to hiring alumni from Columbia University amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests at the Ivy League school in New York City.

In a post to X, formerly Twitter, Tom McClellan, the editor of The McClellan Market Report said that he will no longer be hiring "any recent graduate of Columbia, because that school is so tainted.

"And I furthermore will not hire any older graduates either, because it has become evident that the academic rot is so deeply ingrained as to taint others who have come through that institution in the past several years," McClellan wrote.

"I cannot have faith that any former Columbia student could have achieved sufficient academic success, especially in light of the overwhelming recent evidence that the academic requirements there are so lax such that students have time to go set up protests on the quad instead of studying."

Similarly, consultant Warren Kinsella said: "At the firm I founded 18 years ago, and in the war rooms I've run for the past 31 years, I've employed hundreds of young people. I'll never again hire one from @Columbia."

According to his website, Kinsella previously founded the Daisy Consulting Group.

In a further statement to Newsweek, Kinsella said: "The anti-bias campaign consultancy I founded nearly 20 years ago in Canada will no longer hire anyone from Columbia. I came to this decision with no enthusiasm—but what is happening at Columbia, and elsewhere, didn't leave me with any other option. I can't hire bigots or excuse anti-Semitism."

The comments by McClellan and Kinsella come amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the U.S., including Columbia, where students set up a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" calling on the school to divest from Israel.

Tensions on campuses have remained high since October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and saw more than 200 taken hostage. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials.

Newsweek reached out to McClellan via email for further comment.

Columbia previously announced that it was moving to a hybrid model for classes for the remainder of the semester and, on Monday, university President Minouche Shafik provided updates regarding ongoing negotiations between school officials and protest organizers.

"Since Wednesday, a small group of academic leaders has been in constructive dialogue with student organizers to find a path that would result in the dismantling of the encampment and adherence to University policies going forward," the statement said. "Regretfully, we were not able to come to an agreement."

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