Some employers are reluctant to hire college grads who attended pro-Palestinian protests, survey finds

The class of 2024 have graduated into a rocky jobs market and to make matters worse, employers are becoming increasingly wary about hiring them.

In fact, 64% of employers have said they have become concerned about hiring graduates in the past five years more broadly, according to a recently published survey of 1,268 business leaders in the U.S. by higher education publication Intelligent.com.

Almost a third of employers are particularly worried about hiring recent graduates who have attended pro-Palestinian protests in the past six months, while 22% are reluctant to hire graduates who have participated in these demonstrations.

Pro-Palestinian protests have erupted across colleges in the U.S. since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. Palestinian militant group Hamas claimed over 1,200 lives in the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, according to official figures. And the ensuing Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities there.

Students from high-profile colleges have gotten involved including Columbia University, the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, and the University of Mississippi among others.

Almost two-thirds of employers said they were reluctant to hire protesters because they may exhibit confrontational behavior in the workplace and over half say it's because they are too political and could make other workers feel uncomfortable, per the survey.

Other reasons included that they perceived protesters as liabilities, dangerous, lacking a decent education, and having political beliefs that were different from their own.

"With all the dramatic coverage from recent campus protests and other events, it's understandable that employers may want to avoid