13 federal judges boycott Columbia grads over anti-Israeli protests: ‘An incubator of bigotry’

Thirteen federal judges announced Monday that they will no longer hire Columbia University grads as law clerks because of the “virulent spread of antisemitism” on the troubled Ivy League campus.

The jurists fired off a letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik saying the once-prestigious Manhattan university has become “an incubator of bigotry” as anti-Israeli protests continue to run rampant there, the Free Beacon said.

“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts of threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges said in the scathing missive, which was sent after weeks of campus encampments and the eventual takeover of a historic Columbia academic building.

“It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct,” the judges said.

“Recent events demonstrate that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution of Columbia has destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic society and intellectually diverse country.

“As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education,” the letter said. “Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry.”

The stunning boycott comes as Columbia administrators Monday canceled the university’s traditional school-wide graduation ceremony over concerns about unrest.

Last week, NYPD cops in riot gear stormed the campus to finally tear down a sprawling encampment and dislodge a group of students who broke into Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves in the building.

Columbia was widely criticized for not calling in the police sooner.

More than 100 protesters, including students and many outside agitators, were arrested in the raid.

Columbia is just one of a slew of US colleges overtaken by anti-Israeli demonstrations in the wake of a sneak attack on the Jewish state by Hamas terrorists Oct. 7, which prompted an Israeli counter-strike in the Gaza Strip that has reduced much of the region to rubble.

On Sunday, Columbia protesters called on the school to cancel final exams and automatically pass all of the students because last week’s police raid left them “irrevocably shaken.”

According to the federal judges now boycotting Columbia, the protest there has gone entirely too far.

“Both professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry,” the judges wrote.

“Significant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in Columbia,” they said.

The jurists signing the letter were led by federal appellate Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded earlier boycotts of Yale and Stanford University law schools, according to the Free Beacon.

Last year, Ho and Branch announced they would stop considering Stanford Law School graduates for clerk positions after another conservative judge was booed off the stage at the school.

In 2022, the two judges said they would no longer hire Yale Law School grads as clerks because of a prevalence of “cancel culture” at the renowned university.