The camps have been cleared, the grounds emptied; protesters and naysayers alike have turned to internships, summer gigs, and in some cases, started their post-college careers.
Setting aside what impact, if any, the protests will have on global events, let’s look at the more detailed impact the protests will have on future employment and career prospects. hybrid of protesters.
Sure, that’s important too. After all, this generation is notable for being highly ambitious and professional money. They have the tuition price tag to justify and the loans to pay off. A 2023 survey of Princeton seniors found almost 60 percent take up jobs in finance, consulting, technology and engineering, up from 53% in 2016.
The desire to protect future career plans was certainly an important factor for the protesters. hide yourself in masks and kaffiyeh. According to one recent report in The Times, “Fear of long-term professional consequences has also been a theme among pro-Palestinian protesters since the beginning of the war.”
Activism has played an important role in the lives and academic success of many of these young people. From the children’s books they read (“The Hate U Give,” “I Am Malala), sent to honored young role models, (Greta Thunberg, David Hogg), to vaunted social justice movements (Black Lives Matter, MeToo, climate justice), Gen Z has been told they have to clean up Boomers’ mess. Resist!
College application essays frequently ask students to describe their relationship to social justice, leadership experiences, and their favorite causes. “Where are you on your journey of engagement or fighting for social justice?” ask an essay bun candidate supply in 2022. What is Friend What can we do to ensure the future of the planet?
Across the curriculum, from social sciences to humanities, courses focus on social justice theories and calls to action. Cornell’s library publishes one study guide to the 1969 occupation of the building in which students armed themselves. Harvard offers one social balance graduation certificate. “Colleges have spent years saying that activism is not only welcome but encouraged on their campuses,” Tyler Austin Harper recently noted in the Atlantic Ocean. “Students listened to them.”
Imagine the surprise of a freshman who was expelled from Vanderbilt after graduating forced to have their way into an administrative building. Like him told AP news agencyProtesting in high school is what got him into college in the first place — he wrote his admissions essay about organizing walkouts and received a scholarship for activists and organizers.
Things can still go well for many of these children. Some professions — academia, politics, community organizing, nonprofit work — are well served by an activist resume. But a lot has changed socially and economically since Boomer activists marched from the streets to the workplace, many of them building solid middle-class lives as teachers, creators, and professionals without having to worry about student debt. In a demanding and rapidly changing economy, today’s students crave the security of high-paying jobs.
Not all employers are sympathetic during camp. When a group of Harvard student organizations signed an open letter blaming Israel for the October 7 attack by Hamas, billionaire Bill Ackman is required on X that Harvard releases the names of the students involved “to ensure (sic) that none of us accidentally hires any of their members.” Soon after, a conservative watchdog group posted name and images of students on trucks circling Harvard Square.
Calling out students for their political beliefs is admittedly scary. But Palestinian protests lack the moral clarity of anti-apartheid protests. Along with protesters demanding that Israel stop killing civilians in Gaza, others have stirred fears of anti-Semitism by justifying the October 7 massacre, tearing down posters. features kidnapped Israelis, pushing Zionists out of camps and calling for a “globalization intifada” and the transformation of Palestine into a Palestine “from the river to the sea.”
In November, two dozen leading law firms Written to top law schools, implying that students who engage in what they call anti-Semitic activities, including calling for “the elimination of the State of Israel,” will not be hired. More than 100 companies have since logged in. One of those law firms, Davis Polk, job offer is rescinded to the students whose organizations signed the letter criticized by Ackman. Davis Polk voiced those sentiments opposed to company values. Another big company withdrew the offer to a student at New York University who also blamed Israel for the October 7 attack. In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law urge employers not to recruit he said his students were protesters.
Two partners at corporate law firms, who requested anonymity because other partners did not want them to speak to the media, told me that participating in this year’s protests, especially if it involves an arrest, which could easily take away opportunities at their company. At one of those companies, the hiring manager will scan a candidate’s social media history for problems. (By October 7, students have already grasped this ability, cleaning activities on campus from their resume.)
Additionally, employers often want to hire people who can get along and fit into their company culture, instead of trying to lobby for change. They don’t want politics to disrupt the workplace.
“There is no right answer,” Steve Cohen, a partner at litigation firm Pollock Cohen, said when I asked whether the objection could be held against the applicant. “But if I feel like they don’t accept opinions that are different from their own, then that wouldn’t be appropriate.” (That’s consistent with my experience with Cohen, who worked on Reagan’s presidential campaign and hired me, a radical libertarian, as an editorial assistant in 1994. .)
American companies are fundamentally risk averse. Like the Wall Street Journal reported, companies are drawing “red lines for white-collar activists.” Many employers, including Amazon, break on political activism in the workplace, The Magazine reported. Google recently laid off 28 people.
For decades, employers have used elite universities as human resources surrogates to screen potential candidates and make their jobs easier by conducting recruitment drives. Firstly. For that the same elite schools is the hotbed of activity this year, that calculation may no longer be reliable. Forbes reported that Employers are starting to get sour in the Ivy League. “The perception of what graduates bring has changed. And I think it has more to do with what they’re actually teaching and what they’re achieving,” one Kansas City-based architecture firm told Forbes.
The American university has long been seen as a refuge from the real world, a self-contained community. The large-scale protests of the past year show that in a world awash in cable news and social media, barriers have become more porous. What flies on campus doesn’t necessarily fly in the real world.
The hardest lesson for this generation may be that while they were raised to believe in their right to change the world, the rest of the world may not share or be willing to support their particular vision.
