Dox 'em!

Let's make the Ivy kids have to choose between their support for baby beheaders and those cushy jobs after graduation. Big business is ready to withdraw the job offers; all they need are the names...

In the nightmare days that followed October 7th, it was a satisfying moment of justice delivered.

NYU student bar association president Ryna Workman was set to become a very rich young lady. Ooops, I mean they (this person is non-binary and insists on they/them) was about to become a very rich young person after graduation when she ascended to Winston & Strawn, an international law monolith, where, as a brand new associate, she could rake in at least $200K and perhaps up to $300K a year.

Then on October 10th she/they/them seemed to have become oddly compelled to send out an email telling fellow law students (as if anyone had asked her) she would not condemn what she called Palestinian “resistance” on October 7th since it was all— baby decapitating and so on—a perfectly valid response to Israel’s “regime of state-sanctioned violence” which had “created the conditions that made resistance necessary.”

The emailed letter was leaked and went viral.

Oooops. Sure, a student bar association president who is a three-fer (black, female, and aggressively queer) is one hot prospect for any law firm, especially one that announces its dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion on its website landing page.

But even a woke international behemoth like W&S must have felt a little queasy as the partners considered how a now-famous behead-‘em-while-you-rape-‘em defender could affect client relations in Brussels, São Paolo, London, Paris, and Shanghai.

The behemoth swiftly withdrew its job offer.

But Workman (whose recklessness suggests she may not have really cared about a post-graduation salary anyway) only doubled down on her statements which implicitly equated “resistance” with parading-the-mutilated-naked-bodies-of-women-through-the-streets-of-Gaza-so-the-corpses-could-be-spat-upon.

She was soon caught on a smart phone camera ripping down hostage posters in the NYU neighborhood.

Declaring herself a victim of anti-black, anti queer bias, she (that they/them thing is exhausting; I’m going back to she/her) then went on the interview circuit. Ten days after her unfortunate letter, for instance, an ABC News interviewer seemed to hope she would moderate her stance somewhat, but Workman wasn’t having any of it. Asked if she had felt empathy for murdered and tortured Israeli civilians (babies, seniors, etc.) she answered:

"I will continue to use my voice to uplift the voices of Palestinians and the struggles they're going through….I think whether or not my empathy goes to Israelis or to Palestinians is really not the question here. What the question is, is will we call for an end to this genocide and will we call for a cease fire?"

Meanwhile, a similar situation was repeating on the Harvard campus. According to the New York Times, “a coalition of more than 30 student groups posted an open letter [signed by organizations but not individuals] on the night of the Hamas attack, saying that Israel was ‘entirely responsible’ for the violence.”

When billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a Jewish Harvard grad with an Israeli wife, saw the letter he went apoplectic and used his Twitter account to demand that Harvard make public the names of the students who’d signed the letter so businessmen like him could avoid hiring them.

He was swiftly seconded by more big tech CEOs who tweeted that they’d like to see that list of names too, so they could avoid hiring someone who had a history of cheerleading for a group that had killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents.

This is the age of the internet so locating individual names must have taken a few minutes and soon a “truck with a digital billboard — paid for by a conservative group,” as the Times is quick to point out, was circling “Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, ‘Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.’ "

There were new canceled job offers. Old commie Amy Goodman, now a podcaster for Democracy Now, for one, found a new opportunity for righteous indignation. She had Workman on her show and introduced her by saying she was an example of students across the country “facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods” for just speaking their minds a lil’ bit.

Yup. Losing a $300K job because a law firm decides you may not be good for the brand is definitely livelihood-threatening racist retaliation.

I’m pretty sure a woman like Workman will always find a way to pay the rent—including in Brooklyn where she now appears to live. Even given the recent corporate trend to pull away from DEI mandates, I’m betting there are still thousands of businesses and law firms who would salivate over a physically attractive, apparently confident, glibbly articulate three-fer.

I had kind of hoped we would have the satisfaction of seeing Workman graciously accepting an offer to run a store-front NGO at a salary of $40K year. No such luck. Her internet presence has been pretty well scrubbed. The full text of the infamous October 10 message is gone, there’s no LinkedIn, no Twitter.

Update: We just found Ryna Workman. She’s running a GoFundMe …for herself. As of today it reads:

Any donated money will be used to financially support me in the wake of this targeted harassment campaign. I will use the money to seek out quality therapy and counselling services and purchase meals and groceries. Your help will provide me with a safety net as I look for other employment opportunities. I also plan on using some of the funds to support other students who have suffered financially after expressing solidarity with Palestine. Any amount you're willing to contribute will be greatly appreciated. If you cannot donate, please share this with friends or family – that would mean the world to me.

What Ackman was actually calling for was doxing. And that’s…so harsh. It’s borderline fascist…and this from a Jew who must have some racial memory of the Holocaust in which mere rumors of having Jewish blood could mean a ticket to Auschwitz!

Doxing is so mean, moped the Times, it may be a kind of “heckler’s veto” which chills speech and now “students [whose only crime was being a part of organizations that had signed the letter] had to contend, as one of the victims put it, with ‘people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined.’ "

Fortunately we may see more doxing: As Alan Dershowitz pointed out a a couple of days ago in the New York Sun:

“Those who chant hateful and bigoted slogans should be identified and their names and school affiliations publicized. Potential employers have a right to know whether job applicants support the rape of Jewish women or are willing to march with those who do.”

In other words, people have a right to say what they think, but businesses have a right to protect their image and their client relations by not knowingly hiring people who defend bestiality, necrophilia and so on.

Now, not everybody swelling those crowds, chanting those slogans even know what they’re yelling about. It’s the beach, as me ol’ da, used to say, a way to meet and mingle with a lot of people your own age with a big fat coating of social justice cosmetics. Too bad. Dershowitz points out that every fascist movements’ numbers have been filled out with a healthy compliment of useful idiots

“Some of these useful idiots have no idea what Hamas did on October 7 and what they are implicitly supporting. They have simply been told what to say, what to chant and they follow their pro-Palestinian pied pipers from the river to the sea without knowing which river or what sea are being referred to.

Useful idiots, though, must be held responsible when they promote the evils of Hamas. They were useful idiots who marched with Hitler’s youths in the 1930s and with Castro’s revolutionaries in the 1950s,” Dersh writes.

As I write this, there is word out from organizations like Memri.org that monitor Arab-language media that Hamas, Inc. is gleefully running the clips of surging American crowds to use as a recruiting tool. So if you’re undecided where you stand on the shoving-babies-into-microwaves-as-legitimate-resistance question, you better decide now, because Hamas, Inc. has already decided for you.

Have the courage of your convictions ferrcryingoutloud. What’s with all this shameful crawling away? If you are a member of Students for Palestinian whatevers and have heretofore read and supported their platform don’t start weasel wording now. Are you a warrior worthy of the funds being apparently being funneled to you via the Soros foundation (via Hamas, Inc.) or are you a dilletante? Grown up life involves making hard choices.

Proudly sign your name and give it to reporters!

If the pro-Hamas activists won’t sign their names, may activists on the other side keep making names public, so that signatories may actually be forced to make a hard choice between taking an “unpopular view” and a glorious future on Wall Street. Civil rights marchers in the early sixties generally accepted that they’d thrown in their lot.

What one might call the New Transparency movement is getting legs. Charles Gasparino reported in the New York Post yesterday that recruiters are becoming more cautious about prowling the Ivies at all. Certainly they won’t stop completely, Gasparino wrote, but they’re broadening their searches to include smaller schools, and “applicants from [the Ivies] may find that the days of gliding through the interview process to a job are over.”

Forcing people to choose between their passionate support of the shoot-em-in-the-head-while-you-rape-them crowd and the $200K post-grad job they’ve been preparing for since kindergarten may winnow the pack at these huge city-disrupting, police-resource-wasting, litter-spreading demos.

It’s a win-win. Dox ‘em.