The Skadden Fellowships have been a pretty big deal for the last 37 years. Fellows have done a lot of good over the years, improving legal services for the poor and encouraging economic independence being chief among them. They’ve worked for programs like the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Immigration and Disability Rights projects, and the LGBTQ & HIV Project at the ACLU in New York, NY. Nice while it lasted, huh?
The writing has been on the wall since the firm bent the knee to an administration that thinks vaccines and due process are woke nonsense. Kathleen Rubenstein recently resigned from her position of Executive Director of the Skadden Foundation, sharing that she’d rather not endorse actions that [she] believe[s] will undermine its mission. Susan Plum quickly took over as Skadden’s interim executive director and she appears to share none of those qualms. Reuters has coverage:
The Skadden Foundation, a public interest law fellowship program entirely funded by law firm Skadden Arps, has altered its application criteria to remove language related to racial justice and other topics that became flashpoints for U.S. law firms under the Trump administration.
…
The Skadden Foundation’s website now includes new language, saying applicants should work at a “strong, nonpartisan host organization.”
Yeah, quick question, what in the actual fuck is a “strong, nonpartisan host organization”? The glib answer is to say “whatever host organization Trump likes,” but let’s take a moment to break the words down. With this administration cutting through norms and the incessant politicization of everything, what could qualify as both strong and nonpartisan? An internship at the NAACP would get immediately sidelined as “too woke” and interning at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project wouldn’t be far behind, but could you even do something “neutral” like advocating for voting rights, democracy or the rule of law without getting accused of supporting an anti-Trump liberal agenda? In the spirit of full transparency, I did a quick search on Google to see if there was some obvious example of a “strong nonpartisan host organization” that I was just failing to think of. Here’s what happened:
Do you mean to tell me that the “I make up answers machine” known for just making things up couldn’t even bother to make something up?
So what’s left of the Skadden Fellowship program after you remove all of the commitments to racial justice and equity, and stop caring about the “deep connections with or insights into the marginalized client communities [that Fellows] seek to serve? As Susan Plum would tell it, everything. In a statement posted to the Skadden Fellowship website she states that “[T]he Foundation’s mission has remained constant: empowering the most talented and driven public interest lawyers to serve those living in poverty across America”. The language is nice, but how do you meaningfully serve those living in poverty when the guy calling the shots is the same dude who thought providing relief from a category 4 hurricane meant throwing paper towels at a crowd?
Whatever that service will look like, Skadden did a good job of making sure “conservative ideas” will play a role:
Skadden had agreed that its fellows would “represent a wide range of political views, including conservative ideals,” Trump said in a March 28 post on his Truth Social platform.
Just so we aren’t kidding ourselves, let’s take a quick look at how “serving those who live in poverty” and “conservative ideals” plays out in the real world:
Lordie there is a tape: https://t.co/9ayxRF7n0L pic.twitter.com/ocOXoBC8VM
— Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (@malcolmkenyatta) June 11, 2025
Non-rhetorical, pragmatic question: how do you “serve those who live in poverty” without challenging the real world policy consequences of what Republican leaders and Fox TV personalities advocate for? The prior iterations of the Skadden Fellowship program didn’t have all of the answers, but they had the institutional support and funding to do some of the good work required to help people in need. Now that the firm is more committed to keeping Donald Trump happy than equity, I’m not really sure what is ahead of them. As much as I’d like to say good on Kathleen for resigning, the Fellowship program needs someone like her right now. Until that happens, it’s just a countdown until we see a slew of Skadden Fellows working at the Heritage Foundation.
Skadden Law Firm Fellowship Revamps Application To Omit ‘Racial Justice,’ ‘Equity’ [Reuters]
Earlier: Director Of Prestigious Skadden Fellows Program Resigns Over Firm’s Pro Bono Payola Deal With Trump
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
The post Skadden Fellowship Sells Out, Gets Rid Of Commitments They’ve Championed Since 1988 appeared first on Above the Law.
The Skadden Fellowships have been a pretty big deal for the last 37 years. Fellows have done a lot of good over the years, improving legal services for the poor and encouraging economic independence being chief among them. They’ve worked for programs like the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Immigration and Disability Rights projects, and the LGBTQ & HIV Project at the ACLU in New York, NY. Nice while it lasted, huh?
The writing has been on the wall since the firm bent the knee to an administration that thinks vaccines and due process are woke nonsense. Kathleen Rubenstein recently resigned from her position of Executive Director of the Skadden Foundation, sharing that she’d rather not endorse actions that [she] believe[s] will undermine its mission. Susan Plum quickly took over as Skadden’s interim executive director and she appears to share none of those qualms. Reuters has coverage:
The Skadden Foundation, a public interest law fellowship program entirely funded by law firm Skadden Arps, has altered its application criteria to remove language related to racial justice and other topics that became flashpoints for U.S. law firms under the Trump administration.
…
The Skadden Foundation’s website now includes new language, saying applicants should work at a “strong, nonpartisan host organization.”
Yeah, quick question, what in the actual fuck is a “strong, nonpartisan host organization”? The glib answer is to say “whatever host organization Trump likes,” but let’s take a moment to break the words down. With this administration cutting through norms and the incessant politicization of everything, what could qualify as both strong and nonpartisan? An internship at the NAACP would get immediately sidelined as “too woke” and interning at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project wouldn’t be far behind, but could you even do something “neutral” like advocating for voting rights, democracy or the rule of law without getting accused of supporting an anti-Trump liberal agenda? In the spirit of full transparency, I did a quick search on Google to see if there was some obvious example of a “strong nonpartisan host organization” that I was just failing to think of. Here’s what happened:
Do you mean to tell me that the “I make up answers machine” known for just making things up couldn’t even bother to make something up?
So what’s left of the Skadden Fellowship program after you remove all of the commitments to racial justice and equity, and stop caring about the “deep connections with or insights into the marginalized client communities [that Fellows] seek to serve? As Susan Plum would tell it, everything. In a statement posted to the Skadden Fellowship website she states that “[T]he Foundation’s mission has remained constant: empowering the most talented and driven public interest lawyers to serve those living in poverty across America”. The language is nice, but how do you meaningfully serve those living in poverty when the guy calling the shots is the same dude who thought providing relief from a category 4 hurricane meant throwing paper towels at a crowd?
Whatever that service will look like, Skadden did a good job of making sure “conservative ideas” will play a role:
Skadden had agreed that its fellows would “represent a wide range of political views, including conservative ideals,” Trump said in a March 28 post on his Truth Social platform.
Just so we aren’t kidding ourselves, let’s take a quick look at how “serving those who live in poverty” and “conservative ideals” plays out in the real world:
Non-rhetorical, pragmatic question: how do you “serve those who live in poverty” without challenging the real world policy consequences of what Republican leaders and Fox TV personalities advocate for? The prior iterations of the Skadden Fellowship program didn’t have all of the answers, but they had the institutional support and funding to do some of the good work required to help people in need. Now that the firm is more committed to keeping Donald Trump happy than equity, I’m not really sure what is ahead of them. As much as I’d like to say good on Kathleen for resigning, the Fellowship program needs someone like her right now. Until that happens, it’s just a countdown until we see a slew of Skadden Fellows working at the Heritage Foundation.
Skadden Law Firm Fellowship Revamps Application To Omit ‘Racial Justice,’ ‘Equity’ [Reuters]
Earlier: Director Of Prestigious Skadden Fellows Program Resigns Over Firm’s Pro Bono Payola Deal With Trump
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
