Kristen Clarke Denounces Hate at Columbia Law Commencement

Kristen Clarke, the Biden administration’s civil rights chief, condemned hate-based violence in a Columbia Law School commencement speech Monday in New York.

“Justice is working tirelessly to prosecute hate crimes,” Clarke, an assistant attorney general, said. “White supremacy, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, hate-fueled violence has no place in our country, period.”

Clarke’s comments came as pro-Palestine protests have roiled campus life at Columbia and other prominent universities. Columbia earlier this month canceled its main graduation ceremony, while the law school moved its commencement event to an athletic center more than five miles uptown.

The school faces lawsuits over its handling of the protests, including one by a Jewish student claiming that Columbia failed to take adequate steps to combat violence and harassment on campus.

Clarke, a 2000 Columbia law graduate, is the first woman of color to be confirmed to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division. She previously ran the civil rights bureau in the New York’s attorney general’s office and was president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Her narrow Senate confirmation for the DOJ post in 2021 cemented a civil-rights focus on hate crimes and police accountability.

In her speech, Clarke cited the Justice Department’s prosecution of the man sentenced to death for killing nearly dozen people at a Philadelphia synagogue in 2018 and two men convicted of bombing a mosque in Minnesota in 2017.

Several students were seen wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf with longstanding ties to Palestinian nationalism, over their blue graduation gowns. At least one student held a sign calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war as she took the stage to receive her diploma.

Graduation ceremonies across the nation have been touched by the latest wave of pro-Palestinian protests that have spread to at least 100 US colleges over the past month.

“This year brought the bitter reverberations of war to our doorstep,” law school dean Gillian Lester said in her opening remarks. “A year marked by feelings of sorrow and loss, tension and disagreement, anger and frustration.”

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar gave her 20 minute-plus commencement speech amid pro-Palestine chants at University of California at Berkeley Law’s Friday graduation ceremony. US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned of “troublous times” for Americans’ freedom of speech at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio on Saturday.

New York City police officers arrested over 100 people on or near Columbia’s campus in late April as they broke up protests at the university. Some student protesters are also facing expulsion for refusing to leave Hamilton Hall, a campus building.

The Law School ended its 2024 spring semester with remote final examinations and optional pass/fail grading for students.

The fallout over the protests has caught the attention of some of the legal industry’s major players.

Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell promised “extreme” vigilance in law school recruitment after reports of antisemitism at some protests. Others, such as Foley & Lardner and Davis Polk have rescinded job offers to incoming associates who made public comments on the Israel-Hamas war.