Something is rotten in academia and our culture, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet. National news outlets carried a story this week of a Cornell student who turned down an internship because he was “not interested in working for a Jew.” Can anyone imagine someone being willing to say that out loud a decade ago?
The company is a startup offering hiring software. The company in question, owned by two Jewish brothers, posted the comment on X with the name of the student redacted. They did so as clear evidence that antisemitism existed, and they were experiencing it. However, in spite of redacting the student’s name (which I will not use today), online sleuths were able to identify the student in question, who responded to online outcry with the following justification: “My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant … this is not to say I haven’t had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case.” He then went on to portray himself as the victim of intimidation due to his public outing and seemingly blamed the Jewish community by referring to “your community.” Victimhood has become performative art.
When I started in the recruiting field (I am sorry to say) 40 years ago, there was open racial and ethnic discrimination. It was more evident than outwardly stated, but occasionally outwardly stated. It was less than two decades after the death of the Reverend Martin Luther King. Since then, the various civil rights groups, the HR community, and our country in general have made great strides. But political divisions, increasing tribalism, and the villainization of others have become core to social media and some academic programming. Now for the scariest part of this story. The student offered the internship is studying human resources at the renowned Cornell School of Industrial Labor Relations, one of the most highly rated HR academic programs in the world.
This student seems to not understand that the purpose of diversity is to actually be diverse. All humans bleed red, and all brain matter is gray. When it comes to employment, we should both learn and believe that the skin wrapper and its color, where people worship, who they love, and their ethnic or racial ancestry are completely irrelevant. If this student wants to hide behind his dislike of the foreign policy or actions of Israel because, in this case, it involves Jews, that is absurd. From his information, he is probably of Italian descent; it would be the same as a Jew refusing to hire him because Hitler was buddies with Mussolini 80 years ago. Where does this idiocy end?
The most troubling part of this story, in addition to its involvement of a student of HR, is that it highlights our tolerance of intolerance. The right to your opinion does not extend to the right to bigotry. And, yes, you can work for the employer of your choice, but to feel free to rule out an entire ethnic, religious, or racial group based on bigotry is still bigotry. It is hard to believe that the student’s comments are the first evidence of what must be a deeply held affinity for antisemitism. That the Cornell instructors did not see this is hard to fathom. While there has been outrage, and rightfully so, some trolls on social media have also supported the young man. Once again, our culture’s growing or returning tolerance of intolerance.
When I was a student all those many years ago, we were taught there was social injustice and challenged that it was the duty of our generation to make improvements and eradicate them. We were not taught to be angry, irrational, screaming activists who refused discourse or engaged in respectful debate, which is what we see too much of today on both sides of issues. This angry screed on a variety of topics is also intolerance.
Intolerance—whether directed at people of color, religious or ethnic minorities, or the LGBTQ+ community—should never be tolerated. Period. HR must keep the lamp of progress lit, and both this young man and Cornell should be embarrassed and ashamed.
Elliot H. Clark
CEO
