Columbia University professor retires as probe finds she discriminated against Israelis
Katherine Franke leaves school after investigation says she violated university discrimination policy when saying Israeli students harass Palestinians on campus
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
NEW YORK — A Columbia University law professor has left the university after an investigation found that she had discriminated against Israelis in violation of Columbia policies.
Katherine Franke, a longtime professor at Columbia, was investigated due to comments she made about Israeli students last year. In a January 2024 interview with “Democracy Now,” a New York news outlet, Franke said she and others were concerned about Columbia’s graduate program for students from Israel.
“So many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service,” she said. “They’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.”
Other professors at the law school filed an internal complaint against Franke the following month due to her comments in the interview, Franke told the Inside Higher Ed news outlet. The complaint, filed with the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, said Franke “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin,” she said.
Franke also confirmed the investigation on social media, saying the probe was “unfounded and politicized,” and Columbia’s then-president Minouche Shafik confirmed the investigation to Congress last year.
In an email Thursday to faculty obtained by The Times of Israel, law school dean Daniel Abebe said Franke was “accelerating her planned retirement” and would be leaving Columbia on Friday. The email said she had joined the law school in 2000.
Franke responded to the email, telling other faculty that Abebe’s email “reflects significant inaccuracies” and contained “misinformation,” without explicitly denying her retirement.
The investigation into Franke was conducted by an outside law firm. In November, the investigators determined that Franke had violated university anti-discrimination policy during the “Democracy Now” interview. She also violated university policies barring retaliation by providing the name of a professor who made a complaint against her to a reporter, and for social media activity targeting the complainants, according to a copy of the investigation’s findings obtained by The Times of Israel.
Columbia said in a statement it was “committed to being a community that is welcoming to all and our policies prohibit discrimination and harassment.”
“As made public by parties in this matter, a complaint was filed alleging discriminatory harassment in violation of our policies. An investigation was conducted, and a finding was issued. As we have consistently stated, the University is committed to addressing all forms of discrimination consistent with our policies,” the statement said.
Franke made the comments to “Democracy Now” after anti-Israel protesters on campus claimed that Israel Defense Forces veterans had doused them with skunk spray, a foul-smelling liquid the Israel Police has used to disperse protesters in Israel. Some of the protesters said they required hospital treatment due to the “chemical attack.”
“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,” Franke said in the interview with “Democracy Now.”
The allegations were false, however — instead of skunk spray, the incident involved a non-toxic gag “fart spray” purchased from Amazon. Columbia paid a Jewish student $395,000 in a settlement after suspending him for the incident, according to a report released in November by the US House’s Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Franke sent a statement to The Times of Israel confirming she had left the law school.
“The University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters,” the statement said. “I have come to the view that the Columbia University administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research.”
In the statement, Franke said the students involved in the spray incident were members of Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, although they were not actually involved with the exchange program, and again called the incident a “chemical attack.”
Franke’s faculty page at Columbia says she was supposed to teach a gender justice course during the Spring semester.
Franke was also the subject of congressional scrutiny in April when then-Columbia president Shafik appeared before Congress’ Committee on Education and the Workforce. New York Representative Elise Stefanik asked Shafik about Franke’s comments on Israeli students during the hearing.
“Those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory,” Shafik said, adding that Franke and another professor, Joseph Massad, were under investigation for discriminatory remarks.
After that hearing, in a September interview with “Democracy Now,” Franke said she was facing termination, decried a “weaponization of the disciplinary system” at Columbia, and that she had “not said antisemitic things about Israeli students.”
“The university will no longer tolerate protests and critical engagement,” she said.
Franke is a longtime pro-Palestinian activist and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. She has described herself as an “activist academic” focused on issues including queer theory, gender justice, racial justice and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict plunged Columbia University into turmoil last year, culminating in an unsanctioned protest encampment on campus property, protesters’ forcible takeover of a campus building and dozens of arrests. Israeli and Jewish students have said the protests and rhetoric, including from faculty, created a hostile and unsafe environment for them on campus.
The university administration struggled to tamp down tensions and implemented some counter-measures, including a task force on antisemitism.
Protests have not been as disruptive this year, although student activists have escalated their rhetoric, including by issuing open calls for violence, which the university has condemned.
“As we have said repeatedly, discrimination and promoting violence or terror is not acceptable and antithetical to what our community stands for,” the university said on Friday.
