Columbia University professor files grievance over 'termination'

An esteemed Columbia University professor has filed a formal grievance with the university she taught at for 25 years to investigate the department responsible for upholding anti-discrimination rules for its collusion in anti-Palestinian racism.

Law professor Katherine Franke said she has endured harassment from students, colleagues and the university administration since she spoke about former Israeli soldiers who are students spraying pro-Palestinian student activists with a chemical at Columbia last January, which led to multiple hospitalisations.

During a Democracy Now! interview, she said that students who “come right out of their military service” have “been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus”. 

The interview's aftermath resulted in two Columbia colleagues reporting to the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) that she harassed the Columbia community based on their national origin. The OIE upholds the university’s compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws. The OIE then launched an investigation. 

Franke’s comments were then mischaracterised during highly publicised congressional hearings on campus protests last year, where she was erroneously quoted by Republican Elise Stefanik (nominated to be the next US ambassador to the United Nations) as saying, “all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus”. 

Then-Columbia university president Nemat Talaat "Minouche" Shafik did not correct Stefanik.

Since being publicly named, Franke told Middle East Eye she has endured harassment both on and off campus. She says the hostile environment, including being yelled at and surreptitiously filmed, led her to ask the university if she could move her retirement forward. 

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." 

Franke says that Columbia University would agree only if she forfeited previously agreed retirement benefits such as having an office for five years post-retirement, an assistant, and the status of emeritus professor. 

Columbia University Senate did not respond to MEE's request for comment.

A larger fight

The university’s decision has sparked an outcry from members of the law faculty, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a letter, which Middle East Eye has seen, to the university senate asking them to review Franke's grievance. 

Over 45 Columbia Law School professors also signed a letter earlier this month calling for a Columbia University Senate inquiry into the controversial departure of their colleague Franke, marking an escalation in the dispute over academic freedom and protest rights on campuses.

The 15 January letter, addressed to Columbia's senior leadership, including the interim president and board of trustees, requests an investigation into what the signatories describe as Franke's “constructive termination” following her stance on pro-Palestinian protests.

Columbia colleague Joseph Howley, an associate professor at the Department of Classics, expressed concern about the way Franke had been treated. 

“Her treatment by representatives of the university when she was named before Congress in April was appalling. Nothing warranted the circumstances of her departure," Howley told MEE.

Dozens of Columbia University law faculty demand inquiry into professor's 'termination'

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"It is a worrying sign for all of us that the retirement of a long-serving faculty member could be interfered with as a result of political and legal pressure simply because she had the courage to speak up for the rights and dignity of Palestinians.” 

Franke believes that what happened to her is just part of a larger climate of targeting academic freedom.

“The people behind it are quite clear what their agenda is. If you look at what is happening on our campuses, it has been about anti-Palestinian racism, which gets dressed up as fighting antisemitism. That’s not where they stop - that’s low-hanging fruit," Franke told MEE. 

“Where they go next is critical legal studies, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, all the stuff the right-wing has identified as dangerous ideas.” 

She added that a lot of this has been tested out in Florida, where they (Republicans) are reforming the education system, or as Franke put it, potentially “breaking it”.

“What happened to me is an example of what all members of the academy should be worried about,” Franke warns.

Structural flaws

She also believes she was targeted at the congressional hearings because she is queer. She added that she is "vulnerable on several grounds", partly because of how she speaks "about Palestine, and partly for being queer".

She said she found the lack of a fight being put up by universities “disheartening”. 

“Faculty are putting up a fight, and when they do, things like what’s happening to me happen. But presidents of our universities are going to Congress and collaborating in the dismantling of liberal education institutions,” Franke said.

Franke says the change in culture is a result of the increasing corporate makeup of the boards of trustees over the last 20 years and the treatment of universities as companies rather than as places with “unique missions”.

Franke added that universities’ growing dependence on federal money renders them vulnerable to the threat of losing that funding. 

“Even though they are private institutions, they are actually publicly funded because they are so dependent on federal funding… It’s a terrible business model, how to run a private research institution and render yourself vulnerable to blackmail.”

Since coming into office, US President Donald Trump ordered a pause on federal grants and loans, which has since been blocked by a judge, and could affect universities. The Associated Press reported this week that the Trump directive has universities nationwide "scrambling to determine how a funding freeze could affect their research programs, students and faculty".

She says that moves like this are why universities such as Harvard and NYU were capitulating to adopt the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism and believes that Columbia would also do so.

She said Columbia was adopting a position of neutrality to evade taking "a public position on a genocide".

"The university is also adopting policies of institutional neutrality. In the past, the president of Columbia spoke out about the murder of George Floyd or the invasion of Ukraine. They now regret taking a position on these matters as they are now being asked to take a public position on a genocide. They don’t want to. The way they are getting around it is saying they are committed to academic neutrality."

While Franke’s teaching career at Columbia has ended, her advocacy has not.

“I care about the dignity and rights of Palestinians. I never picked this fight with Columbia. I don’t think it’s a worthy fight. I now have more time to focus on what I care about which is addressing a genocide, to focus on the human rights issues which motivated me to get involved in Palestinian solidarity work to begin with.”