An elite law firm has withdrawn job offers to three Ivy League students linked to letters expressing support for Palestinians that blamed Israel for Hamas attacks.
Davis Polk & Wardwell said the views were “in direct conflict with our firm’s value system”.
It added that student leaders who signed the statements were “no longer welcome at our firm”.
The students, who were not named, attend Harvard and Columbia.
However, an email sent by managing partner Neil Barr and seen by the BBC suggests that a door may have been left open for the decision to be reversed.
It said the firm was talking to two of the students “to ensure that any further colour offered to us by these students is considered”.
Tuesday’s decision by the firm – which employs around 1,000 lawyers and has annual revenues of $1.7bn (£1.4bn) – comes as the views of US university students on the conflict in the Middle East continue to cause controversy on and off college campuses.
Following the 7 October attacks, which left at least 1,400 Israelis dead, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and more than 30 other student groups issued a letter stating: “We, the undersigned student organisations, hold the Israeli regime fully responsible for all the violence that is unfolding.”
The backlash was immediate, with some university donors threatening to withhold money and a Harvard Jewish centre calling the statement anti-Semitic.
Some of the student groups and leaders named as signatories later distanced themselves, some saying they were unaware of its full contents before it was published.
Others have had their faces plastered on billboards being driven around the Boston area by the conservative group Accuracy in Media.
“We’re just reinforcing the messages that the students have put out themselves. If they regret their messages, they can apologise and we will take their pictures down,” Adam Guillette, the organisation’s president, told the BBC.
A similar letter signed by more than 20 student groups at Columbia read in part: “The weight of responsibility for the war and the casualties lies undeniably with the extremist Israeli government and other Western governments.”
Both letters were published while the full extent of the attacks was still emerging and before the start of the current Israeli offensive in Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 3,000 people.
Davis Polk & Wardwell is not the first firm to withdraw an offer of work over the statements.
Winston & Strawn withdrew an offer to former New York University Student Bar Association president Ryna Workman, who wrote to fellow students that “Israel bears full responsibility” for the Hamas attacks.
She said in a statement that she had also been removed as student body president and had received death threats.
“This attention to one student’s email to his fellow students is completely misplaced and a dangerous distraction,” the statement said.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire) said the current conflict in the Middle East had led to one of the most tense moments for student free speech in a decade.
“From a legal perspective, companies have the right to rescind job offers, private citizens can say they will never hire anyone from Harvard. But Fire urges a pause,” said Alex Morey, Fire’s director of campus rights advocacy.
“Do we want to live in a society where everyone has to have an orthodox view in order to get a job?”