'Persecution': Outpouring of anger after 'termination' of pro-Palestine Columbia professor
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Esteemed professor says university's 'toxic and hostile environment' made it impossible for her to continue teaching at the Ivy League

Academics, activists and alumni are criticising Columbia University this week after tenured professor Katherine Franke announced that the institution pressured her to retire over her vocal criticism of Israel and support for pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Franke founded the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and served on the executive committee of Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies.

Late last week, she announced in a statement that she had “reached an agreement” with the university to retire after serving 25 years as a law faculty member. But while the university may call this change in status “retirement”, Franke said, it should be “understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms”

. “I have come to regard Columbia Law School as a hostile work environment in which I can no longer enter the classroom, hold office hours, walk through the campus, or engage in faculty governance functions free from egregious and unwelcome harassment on account of my defense of students’ freedom to protest and express views that are critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”

  • paysrenttobirds
    4·
    1 day ago

    Here are some of the professor’s comments in the interview in question (not the one linked in this article), from a year ago, at least this is what I think most likely to be construed by the university as targeting a group of students:

    And what the students were able to do is examine video from that protest and identify, I think, three older students. We have a — Columbia has a program. It’s a graduate relationship with older students from other countries, including Israel. And it’s something that many of us were concerned about, because so many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus. And it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past. But we’ve never seen anything like this. And the students were able to identify three of these exchange students, basically, from Israel, who had just come out of military service, who were spraying the pro-Palestinian students with this skunk water. And they were disguised in keffiyehs so that they could mix in with the students who were demanding that the university divest from companies that are supporting the occupation and the war, and were protesting and demanding a ceasefire. So we know who they were.