The Decline and Fall of Katherine Franke
Anti-Zionist falsehoods, malicious absurdities, and self-serving martyrdom at Columbia.
On 10 January 2025, Katherine Franke announced her departure from the Columbia University Law School. After she issued a public statement, she had it republished on the Academe blog of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Law School dean Daniel Abebe claimed that Franke was merely bringing her planned retirement forward. Not true, Franke objected: “While the university may call this change in my status ‘retirement,’ it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”
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Two of Franke’s law-school colleagues had filed a complaint after Franke gave an interview to Democracy Now on 25 January 2024, in which she claimed that IDF veterans enrolled at Columbia had a history of harassing other students but that the university was not taking this harassment seriously. The complaint stated that Franke had “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin.” An independent law-firm investigation found that she had violated university anti-discrimination policy.
Franke’s January 2024 remarks were occasioned by exaggerated accusations from anti-Zionist students following an unauthorised anti-Israel rally held on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library on 19 January. The students accused two IDF veterans of attacking them with a chemical weapon and falsely claimed that at least ten students required hospitalisation as a result. The student protestors said the chemical agent was “skunk spray” or “skunk water,” a non-lethal organic compound that Israel developed for crowd control. It leaves an odour like an open sewer that can cling to clothes for days and can cause headaches or vomiting in some people.
