BY KATHERINE FRANKE
The next is the textual content of a press release issued on January 10, 2025 by Katherine Franke, previously the James L. Dohr Professor of Legislation at Columbia College. It’s posted right here along with her permission
For the final yr and a half, as college students at Columbia College and throughout the globe have protested towards the Israeli authorities’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 assaults, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I’ve ardently defended college students’ proper to peaceable protest on our campus and throughout the nation. I actually believed that scholar engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated custom at Columbia College of scholar protest. As a substitute, the College has allowed its personal disciplinary course of to be weaponized towards members of our neighborhood, together with myself. I’ve been focused for my assist of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia College, by a number of colleagues, by college trustees, and by outdoors actors. This has included an unjustified discovering by the College that my public feedback condemning assaults towards scholar protesters violated college non-discrimination coverage.
I’ve come to the view that the Columbia College administration has created such a poisonous and hostile atmosphere for reliable debate across the conflict in Israel and Palestine that I can not train or conduct analysis.
Efficient right this moment, I’ve reached an settlement with Columbia College that relieves me of my obligations to show or take part in school governance after serving on the Columbia regulation school for 25 years. Whereas the college could name this alteration in my standing “retirement,” it ought to be extra precisely understood as a termination dressed up in additional palatable phrases. In alternate for my settlement to step down as an energetic member of the Columbia school, the college demanded that I give up important rights and privileges which can be supplied to all retired school as a matter of coverage. To explain my change in standing with the college as a “retirement” is each deceptive and disingenuous.
Final January I spoke out publicly, defending Columbia college students’ proper to protest in favor of a ceasefire within the Israeli navy assault in Gaza and for Columbia College to divest from Israel, a rustic that’s broadly regarded to be participating in a genocide towards Palestinians. In my statements, together with an interview on Democracy Now! on January 25, 2024, I condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on our campus with a poisonous chemical that brought on such important accidents that a number of college students have been hospitalized. In these statements I famous that the events that sprayed our college students with a chemical have been Israeli college students who have been presently enrolled in Columbia’s joint diploma program with Tel Aviv College, and who had not too long ago carried out navy service in Israel. These details have been confirmed each by Columbia College and the Israeli college students themselves. I additionally famous that there had been a historical past of assaults towards Palestinian college students and their allies on our campus by Israeli college students who had not too long ago accomplished navy service, and that Columbia College was not taking this sample of harassment severely sufficient. I’ve lengthy had a priority that the transition from the mindset required of a soldier to that of a scholar might be a tough one for some folks, and that the college wanted to do extra to guard the security of all members of our neighborhood. Quite a few college students at Columbia have verified this historical past of harassment and that they’d consulted me about it over time.
In February 2024, two Columbia colleagues filed a grievance towards me with the college’s Workplace of Equal Employment and Affirmative Motion, charging that one sentence in my feedback on Democracy Now! amounted to harassment of Israeli members of the Columbia neighborhood in violation of college insurance policies. Because the investigation of those complaints progressed, I insisted that Columbia College couldn’t function a impartial investigator or choose of this matter because it was irretrievably biased towards me. For instance, in April 2024 throughout a congressional listening to, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik requested then-President Minouche Shafik what disciplinary actions had been taken towards “Professor Katherine Franke from Columbia Legislation College, who stated that ‘all Israeli college students who’ve served within the IDF are harmful and shouldn’t be on campus.’” President Shafik responded, “I agree with you that these feedback are fully unacceptable and discriminatory.” President Shafik was conscious at the moment that Congresswoman Stefanik’s abstract of my feedback was grossly inaccurate and deceptive, but she made no effort to appropriate the Congresswoman’s deliberate mischaracterization of my feedback.
After a lot insistence, Columbia agreed to nominate an outdoor investigator of the fees towards me, and in late November 2024, the college issued a willpower, based mostly on the investigation, that my one sentence of feedback on Democracy Now! violated EOAA insurance policies as a result of I referenced a historical past of harassment of Palestinians and their allies on our campus, and additional discovered that I had retaliated towards the complainants on this case by confirming their namesto a reporter final summer season.
I filed an attraction of that willpower of guilt, and may the willpower be upheld, the matter would go to my Dean to impose a sanction.
Upon reflection, it grew to become clear to me that Columbia had grow to be such a hostile atmosphere, that I may not function an energetic member of the college. During the last yr I’ve had a number of folks posing as college students come to my workplace to hunt my recommendation about scholar protests whereas they have been secretly videotaping me after which edited variations of these recordings have been printed on right-wing social media websites. After President Shafik defamed me in Congress, I acquired a number of loss of life threats at my dwelling. I repeatedly obtain emails that specific the hope that I’m raped, murdered, and in any other case assaulted on account of my assist of Palestinian rights. I’ve had regulation college colleagues observe me from the subway to my workplace within the regulation college, yelling at me in entrance of scholars that I’m a Hamas-supporter and accusing me of supporting violence towards Israeli ladies and youngsters. Colleagues within the regulation college have videotaped me with out my consent after which shared it with proper wing organizations outdoors the regulation college. And I’ve had college students enroll in my courses with the first function of making conditions through which they’ll provoke discussions that they’ll file, publish on-line, after which use to file complaints towards me with the college.
I’ve come to treat Columbia Legislation College as a hostile work atmosphere through which I can not enter the classroom, maintain workplace hours, stroll by way of the campus, or interact in school governance capabilities free from egregious and unwelcome harassment on account of my protection of scholars’ freedom to protest and specific views which can be essential of Israel’s therapy of Palestinians, therapy that’s broadly regarded by probably the most distinguished human rights organizations nationally and globally as a genocide.
I’ve additionally come to treat Columbia College as having misplaced its dedication to its distinctive and essential mission. Slightly than defend the function of a college in a democracy, in fostering essential debate, analysis, and studying round issues of significant public concern, and in educating the subsequent era with the instruments to grow to be engaged residents, Columbia College’s management has demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the very enemies of our educational mission. In a time when assaults on increased schooling are probably the most acute because the McCarthyite assaults of the Nineteen Fifties, the College’s management and trustees have deserted any obligation to guard the college’s most treasured assets: its school, college students, and educational mission. As Columbia’s Board of Trustees has grow to be constituted largely by hedge fund managers, funding bankers, and enterprise capitalists, the college has grow to be extra of an actual property holding concern than a non-profit academic establishment. With this degradation of the college’s management has come, in some circumstances, an lack of ability to withstand pressures positioned on the college by outdoors entities carrying a quick for the destruction of upper schooling, and in different circumstances, a shared dedication to a right-wing, and pro-Israel, ideology.
My dedication to defending the college and our college students rendered me a horny goal for the college’s opponents, they usually weaponized the EOAA course of to relax and punish my advocacy on the scholars’ behalf. I stroll away from an energetic function on the Columbia instructing school now – and at some important price – not as a result of this tactic has gained, however somewhat as a result of I intention to refocus my efforts on combating for the rights and dignity of Palestinians, resisting the pull of a disingenuous distraction at Columbia. I’ll at all times be a instructor, and am at all times studying.
Katherine Franke was the James L. Dohr Professor of Legislation at Columbia College, and Founder/Director of the Heart for Gender & Sexuality Legislation. She serves on the Govt Committees of Columbia’s Institute for Analysis on Ladies, Gender and Sexuality, and the Heart for Palestine Research. She is among the many nation’s main students writing on regulation, sexuality, race, and faith drawing from feminist, queer, and significant race concept.
Professor Franke additionally based and served as school director of the Legislation, Rights, and Faith Venture, a suppose tank based mostly at Columbia Legislation College that develops coverage and thought management on the advanced methods through which spiritual liberty rights work together with different basic rights. In 2021, Professor Franke launched the ERA Venture, a regulation and coverage suppose tank to develop academically rigorous analysis, coverage papers, professional steerage, and strategic management on the Equal Rights Modification (ERA) to the U.S. Structure, and on the function of the ERA in advancing the bigger reason for gender-based justice.
Professor Franke additionally led a crew that researched Columbia Legislation College’s relationship to slavery and its legacies. Her first guide, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (NYU Press 2015), considers the prices of successful marriage rights for identical intercourse {couples} right this moment and for African Individuals on the finish of the Civil Warfare. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to undertake analysis for Wedlocked. Her second guide, Restore: Redeeming the Promise of Slavery’s Abolition (Haymarket Press 2019), makes the case for racial reparations in the US by returning to a time on the finish of slavery when many previously enslaved folks have been supplied land explicitly as a type of reparation, but after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated the land was stolen again from freed folks and given to former slave homeowners.
