Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke May Be Fired Following Complaint Filed By Two Colleagues

Update:  Paul Horwitz (Alabama), A Serious Issue, Unseriously Reported

Inside Higher Ed, Columbia’s President Denounced Her Before Congress. Firing Could Be Next.:

In January, pro-Palestinian protesters on Columbia University’s campus said they had been sprayed with a harmful chemical. Students were hospitalized. No arrests were reported.

Katherine Franke, Columbia’s James L. Dohr Professor of Law, told Inside Higher Ed that the left-leaning radio and television newscast Democracy Now! reached out to her about the situation because she’d been involved in defending pro-Palestinian student protesters from disciplinary charges.

In the Jan. 25 broadcast, host Amy Goodman said, “Eight students were reportedly hospitalized or seeking medical attention.” Goodman said protest organizers were accusing other students who had served in the Israeli military, saying they sprayed a weapon “known as ‘skunk’ that soldiers also deploy on Palestinians.” ...

Franke told Goodman during the program that Columbia has a program through which it has a “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.” ...

This didn’t remain a fleeting broadcast interview. It led, Franke says, to a university investigation that millions heard about when Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, revealed it in testimony on Capitol Hill in April. ...

“Let me ask about Professor Katherine Franke from the Columbia law school who said that all Israeli students who have served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus,” Representative Elise Stefanik asked Shafik. Stefanik, a New York Republican, had already earned popularity in some corners for her pointed questions in the previous hearing. “What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” she asked.

“I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory” Shafik replied. Pressed again, Shafik said Franke “has been spoken to by a very senior person in the administration, and she has said that that was not what she intended to say.” Later in the hearing, Shafik said that Franke was under investigation—making Franke one of multiple faculty members whom Shafik criticized and revealed investigations into during the hearing. Shafik said one visiting scholar “will never teach at Columbia again.”

“We are promised up and down that these internal investigations are confidential,” Franke—whose work focuses on antidiscrimination law in the areas of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity—told Inside Higher Ed. She called the revelation of it a “real breach of my employment contract.”

Now, Franke, a tenured professor, said she’s heard that a report on her investigation is imminent, and she fears it may result in her firing after more than 22 years at Columbia. ...

But now her pro-Palestinian speech and actions may cost her her job. And she alleges Columbia’s investigation and possible forthcoming punishment are partly in retaliation for her helping legally defend hundreds of pro-Palestinian student protesters, including training other lawyers to do so. “There has been a concerted campaign by this university to punish what would otherwise be protected speech or political protest,” Franke said.

Franke told Inside Higher Ed that two of her law school colleagues, Zohar Goshen and Joshua Mitts, filed an internal complaint with the university in February. She provided a letter from the university, dated Feb. 13, saying the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action was starting an investigation after Goshen and Mitts alleged that she "harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin" in her Democracy Now! interview.

“Specifically, the complainants allege that your statement in the interview that ‘so many of those Israeli students who come to the Columbia campus are coming right out of their military service and have been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus’ subjected Israelis to harassment,” the letter says.

Goshen and Mitts didn’t return requests for comment Thursday. ...

Franke said she also argued that the university “had a litigation incentive” to aggressively discipline her because Jewish students were accusing the university in lawsuits of tolerating a hostile environment for them by not sufficiently enforcing disciplinary codes.

According to Franke, she and her attorney successfully got university employees to step aside as the investigators, and an outside law firm, Sher Tremonte, is now investigating. “I was deposed on June 13 for a couple of hours,” Franke said. “It seemed pretty clear that the lead investigator had made her mind up already.” ...

If a tenured professor can be ousted for her speech, Franke said she fears what will happen to those with fewer protections, particularly in a possible second Trump administration. “If they can go after me for defending the students, what comes next?” Franke said. “Speech about abortion, critical of Trump, climate change?”

Intercept, Columbia Law Professor Smeared By Israel Supporters Could Lose Her Job:

“What’s of greatest concern is not really my 20-year-plus career at Columbia, but what this says about peaceful protest on our campuses, around the lives and dignity of Palestinians,” Franke said in an interview with The Intercept.

“What’s happening to me is happening to our students, it’s happened to people on many other campuses. And it’s, to me, shocking at a place like Columbia — which prides itself on being a home for, if not only tolerating, maybe welcoming student engagement with public events or public affairs like the crisis in the Middle East,” she continued. “And yet they’re punishing me and others for standing up for our students who I think are engaging in appropriate protest.” ...

Franke is expecting a decision any day now. She was told the university would make a decision in a matter of weeks. 

“Today, it’s Palestine. Tomorrow could be abortion. It could be, you know, criticizing the Trump administration. It could be climate change,” Franke said. “I feel like it’s Palestine today, but what’s at stake here is something much larger, of the imposition of a kind of orthodoxy around a very contested political concept or context.” 

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