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Katherine Franke
Katherine M. Franke[1] is an American legal scholar who specializes in gender and sexuality law. She was the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. In January 2024, after a Columbia student, who was a former member of the IDF, was involved in spraying an odorous substance at pro-Palestinian students[2] Franke stated she had concerns about Israeli students coming to Columbia “right out of their military service”.[3] An external investigation concluded in November that Franke had violated the university's equal opportunity and affirmative action policies; Franke appealed the decision.[3] In January, 2025, Franke said she had effectively been terminated from Columbia University[3] although the university characterized it as a retirement.[4] EducationFranke received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1981.[5] She graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1986, the received a LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1993 and a S.J.D. from Yale in 1999.[1] CareerFranke began practicing law in the 1980s as a civil rights litigator, having received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to work on addressing social discrimination faced by people with AIDS. She then joined the New York City Commission on Human Rights as a supervising attorney in its newly created AIDS division.[6] In 1990, Franke was named executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. Franke began her academic career in 1995 at the James E. Rogers College of Law of the University of Arizona and then taught at Fordham University School of Law from 1997 until 2000, when she joined the Columbia Law faculty. Franke received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to carry out research on the costs of winning marriage rights for same sex couples and African Americans during the mid-19th century, and her research was published into the book Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (2015).[7][8] Franke is out and has spoken on her experiences as a member of the gay community in the 1980s and 1990s, and on being one of few out lesbian professors earlier in her career.[9] In 2018, Franke traveled to Israel as part of a 14-member human rights delegation touring Israel and the West Bank. However, she was detained at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv before being deported from the country.[10] The Israeli authorities accused her of ties to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.[11] In October 2023, following the Hamas attacks on Israel, and Israel's bombing of Gaza, Franke co-authored a letter, signed by over 150 Columbia faculty, entitled "An Open Letter from Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty in Defense of Robust Debate About the History and Meaning of the War in Israel/Gaza".[12] The letter was criticized in a subsequent letter signed by 300 other Columbia faculty members, who argued that the first letter justified the attacks and called for an unequivocal condemnation of the October 7 attacks.[13] In January 2024, a smelly substance was released at pro-Palestinian students at Low Memorial Library on the Columbia University campus; whether or not that substance was toxic is disputed.[14] One of the students suspended in connection with the incident was identified as a former member of Israel Defense Forces (IDF).[3] In response, Franke said the student was part of a broader problem during an interview with Democracy Now!.
Katherine Franke, Interview with Democracy Now![15]
In December, during the Congress hearing on antisemitism, Republican politician Elise Stefanik said Franke was an example of discrimination on campuses during a dialogue with Columbia University president Minouche Shafik.[3][16][17] Stefanik: Franke accused[disputed – discuss] Stefanik of misquoting her in the exchange, and sources agree that Stefanik misquoted Franke.[weasel words][18][19][3] Stefanik's spokesperson admitted[disputed – discuss] Stefanik "was paraphrasing" from the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, which itself was paraphrasing from another source.[16] Franke later told MSNBC that "we’ve had problems on our campus with certain people who've come to campus coming right out of their military service and that transition from the state of mind one needs to be a soldier to the state of mind one needs to be a student—[those] are different states of mind and that transition can be difficult."[16] An external investigation concluded in November, Franke had violated the university's equal opportunity and affirmative action policies; Franke appealed the decision.[3] After this, Franke said she received violent threats via email and at her home:[19] "I regularly receive emails that express the hope that I am raped, murdered and otherwise assaulted."[16] Franke also said people posed as students, enrolled in her classes to provoke discussions, and secretly videotaped her.[16] ResignationIn January, 2025, Franke announced her retirement from Columbia, which she says she was forced to take by the university because of her critical views of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.[3][20] In the aftermath, many academics worldwide criticized the university.[weasel words][21] The Center for Constitutional Rights called it "an egregious attack" on academic freedom.[18] The United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, reported that Franke has been "another victim of the pro-Israelism that is turning universities, and other spaces of public life, into places of obscurantism, discrimination and oppression". Professor Noura Erakat, a human rights lawyer at Rutgers University, described the university's treatment of Professor Franke as "egregious".[20] References
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