Last week, we covered Georgetown Law students’ valiant effort to stop ICE from showing up to their career fair. There are many reasons to do so, but the most obvious is that it cuts against the school’s tradition of trying to be on the right side of history. It was a joint effort with George Washington Law to keep abductors off their campus. There’s good praxis in recognizing that things don’t immediately go full tilt fascist overnight — you make a few appeals to diversity of thought, throw in a few handshakes and jobs, until you suddenly find yourself sitting in a Nazi bar. And while the law students did see victory, it was only partial. GW Hatchet has coverage:
Students condemned GW Law officials’ decision not to revoke U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s invitation to a public interest career fair on Friday after more than 1,000 students signed a petition calling on officials to bar them over concerns about its immigration enforcement practices.
Students petitioned to disinvite two ICE divisions from GW Law and Georgetown University Law Center’s joint annual virtual Public Sector Recruiting Program last week, gathering over 1,200 signatures and gaining a meeting on Wednesday with Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew, who ultimately chose not to bar the organization, citing free expression, University policy and accreditation rules.
…
Though ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor pulled out of the program, the second participating ICE division, the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, continued to participate, students said.
The Human Rights Violators division? Isn’t that just ICE proper?
And as nice as it is that Dean Matthew can throw her hands up and explain away letting ICE set up camp as “free expression,” it is worth noting that ICE is exactly the sort of arrested expression organization that could decide to punish her if she said otherwise:
The minimizing response is to say that all of this is blown out of proportion because the unobjectionable prong of ICE fighting human rights violations and war crimes isn’t as bad as the one killing people in broad daylight. But that’s the trick: it starts well meaning and unobjectionable until it doesn’t stay that way. ICE on campus is ICE on campus. And according to GW Hatchet, at least 20 employers withdrew from the career fair in response to ICE’s invitation not being rescinded.
Both GW and Georgetown students voiced disappointment in their schools sitting on their hands despite the 1,000+ students who signed a petition asking them to get off their asses. The next time either of these schools reads off some boilerplate language about how much their students’ voices matter to the administration, they should be summarily booed. Respect to the students and employers who stood on their principles enough to do something, especially when the schools were too inept to change course. GULC’s dean, Joshua Teitelbaum, told the student body that the PSRP has never disinvited an employer before, and that he did not believe this was an appropriate time to deviate from that policy. Makes you wonder what the threshold of dead soccer moms and ICU nurses and rising deaths in custody and Germans calling out Nazi shit for looking like Nazi shit or “giving your heart out” gestures and white supremacist dog whistles in recruitment ads it would take to be an “appropriate time to deviate” from the policy. Reads like complicity to me, but what do I know? I’m not a law school dean.
Students Blast GW Law For Declining To Disinvite ICE From Public Interest Career Fair [GW Hatchet]
Earlier: Georgetown Law Students Petition To Keep Their School From Becoming An ICE Recruitment Center
Georgetown Law Student Group Calls Skadden Cowards, Opts Out Of Recruitment Event
Law School Arms Students With Anti-ICE Hotline To Protect The Community
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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