this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
163 points (83.8% liked)

politics

19239 readers
1821 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

TheIntercept.com

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Well no shit. This person used their position in academia to spam out a newsletter of their political affiliation to the student body. The offer was rescinded because the law firm saw that they don’t know or follow proper etiquette in positions of supposedly unbiased positions. This person will likely not be proper legal counsel to individuals or companies they might not personally see eye to eye.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeah this is exactly right; an inability to separate their own political stance from their professional role. For the law firm, there is also a lack of insight and common sense around wading into such a controversial and difficult issue in such a way.

This is the text from their newsletter:

Hi y'all.

This week, I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination. Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life. This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary. I will not condemn Palestinian resistance. Instead…

I condemn the violence of apartheid. I condemn the violence of settler colonialism. I condemn the violence of military occupation. I condemn the violence of dispossession and stolen homes. I condemn the violence of trapping thousands in an open-air prison. I condemn the violence of collective punishment. I condemn the violence of phosphorous bombs. I condemn the violence of the United States military-industrial complex. >I condemn the violence of obfuscating genocide as a "complex issue.” I condemn the violence in labeling oppressed people as "animals." I condemn the violence in removing historical context. I condemn the violence of silence.

Palestine will be free.

Your SBA President,
Ryna

This was in the NYU LAW Student Bar Association's SBA Weekly newsletter.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Even as someone who is generally pro-Palestine, if I was working at a law firm I would rescind a job offer to the person who wrote and sent around that letter.

I mean if I was hiring a roofer or something and saw that he had a pro Palestine newsletter like that, who cares. But if I'm hiring another professional whose entire job it is to not only see nuances in cases and arguments, but to recognize how best to present and argue them before a court of people who may have very different beliefs than them, and make frequent on the record statements that will be preserved until society collapses, then this gives me pretty ample reason to believe they won't be capable of executing any of that with the level of professionalism I would want out of a coworker.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. I had a funny little blog while I was in college. I think i had twenty regular readers. It was unassociated with my name, but if you tried you could find the connections. When I went into tax and consulting, that blog disappeared into the aether. Publicly I had to be boring and professional. It's so... What's the word. Not me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that blog disappeared into the aether

Out of curiosity... before, or after Archive.org?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No one backed it up in there. I checked. It was a small blog.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yikes

I'm a big advocate for considering Palestinians to be completely separate from Hamas, and that punishing civilians for the attack by cutting off crucial resources is unconscionable. If I were on a hiring committee, it would be for an engineering position, and I would strongly recommend against hiring them.

They have very pointedly not made a condemnation of the Hamas attack which killed innocent people and took them hostage. They liken that attack to legitimate Palestinian resistance, and they blame Israel for the actions of the terrorists, instead of the terrorists. This guy isn't losing the job offer for supporting Palestinian civilians. He's losing it for refusing to condemn murderers and the murders, and suggesting the terrorists are Palestine's resistance. And others have pointed out how he used his position of power inappropriately as a bully pulpit.

It's beyond clear that he'd be a terrible lawyer, and that he has a terrible morality. If he were an engineer, I wouldn't be able to trust his professional opinion to be separate from his personal one. If Israel was wanting to buy our green energy product, and the deal fell through, I couldn't know if he purposely tanked the deal or there were other issues. Not to mention, their causality is totally insane. When you have equipment failures or process events, if the reactor fails, the reactor fails. Something may have caused it to fail, but the reactor is still what failed, and you need to look into if the reactor design needs modification in some way. You can't say the root cause of the failure was something before the reactor and then totally ignore the reactor.

What a fucking idiot.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They have very pointedly not made a condemnation of the Hamas attack which killed innocent people and took them hostage.

Not only is there absolutely no condemnation - that entire text is a justification of the mass murder of 1,200 people.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As I chronicled elsewhere, I worked with an attorney that would spam antivaxx right-wing propaganda all over his fucking LinkedIn and he remains employed to this day.

People have a really fucking stupid notion of how lawyers actually behave in real life.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, different positions and different companies hold people to different standards.

Was your attorney a student body president at NYU?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I suggest you read the post I'm responding to. There is no such thing as an unbiased person, and attorneys are no different. Thinking otherwise is Hollywood bullshit, which is all most people know about lawyers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I suggest you re-read the posts you’re replying to. The problem is not that a person has an opinion, the problem is not being able to choose where and when to express what degree of opinion and still think you should have a position at a white shoe kind of firm.

[–] dependencyInjection 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everybody is biased. The question is can you put your biases aside for your job.

I could not, ergo I’m not a lawyer or in a role where that matters.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's defeatist horseshit. You be a lawyer FOR your biases. You be a public defender. You work for the ACLU or EFF. You become a right-wing grifter and just start suing everyone for being woke. You become a lawyer specializing in IP so you can sue the shit out of infringers. You become a lawyer specializing in IP so you can sue the shit out of greedy-ass corporations.

All people are inherently biased and if you think you can't be an attorney because you're biased, fuck you. Get off your ass and be an attorney. You have no excuse except for the crushing debt and 6-7 years of coursework unless you've already completed a Bachelor's degree. Do it. Because some asshole on the internet told you to.

[–] dependencyInjection 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hardly defeatist, as I really don’t want to be a lawyer. I have my dream job and feel blessed for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Screw that! Go spend $200k on law school! Get paid $40k a year as a PD! It's the new hip thing!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Why the fuck would someone want to be an attorney have you met them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If I were the head of a law firm, I wouldn't hire the idiot you're talking about or this guy. That doesn't mean nobody ever will, but it's not that shocking that one potential employers decided to pass. Nobody is obliged to hire him and he showed a pretty fundamental lack of judgement & ethics.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I had to deal with this during the pandemic. As the team lead, my ex-worker, exhausted and furious at the political climate, fired off a email to our client base. It doesn't matter if we agreed with the statement or not. But like, bro... we provide technical services.

I tried my best to step in front of the fire, brush it as a misstep and give them mental health days. But they went radioactive on the CEO and my boss and I had to let them go.

It's like that Dave Chappelle skit "when keeping it real goes wrong"