Columbia’s Leading Antisemite

AVERY BASHE

More than 20 student groups at Columbia University signed a joint letter saying, “If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out.” According to these groups, an attack by a terrorist group that left 1,200 dead and at least 2,700 wounded in Israel was inevitable.

They also blamed Israel and the U.S. rather than Hamas: “The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist  government and other Western governments, including the U.S. government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization.” 

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Avery Bashe was a leader of an organization that signed this hateful, antisemitic letter.

Student signatories including Bashe were never held accountable by the university.

And now, Avery Bashe has graduated and is employed by law firm Debevoise & Plimpton as a corporate law clerk and member of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group.

Debevoise & Plimpton was one of the firms that signed an open letter to major universities promising “zero tolerance” and saying there is “no room for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism or any other form of violence, hatred or bigotry on your campuses, in our workplaces or our communities.”

And yet Debevoise & Plimpton brought Avery Bashe on as a summer associate before the letter was published – but they hired Bashe full-time after the letter had circulated and after Debevoise & Plimpton promised to consider this in their hiring practices.

Columbia and Debevoise & Plimpton have pledged to take action against antisemitism. But for all those promises, Avery Bashe has faced no consequences for signing an antisemitic letter that was part of a campus movement that led to Jewish students feeling unsafe on campus and led to national condemnation from a multitude of employers – including Debevoise & Plimpton.