Discipline finally caught up with Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke

 

An egregious antisemite and anti-Israel force on campus. Franke was booted out (or “accelerating her planned retirement” according to the administration) and left her job on Friday.

Former Columbia president Minouche Shafik didn't have the guts to fire her, but her fellow law professors filed a complaint against her and an investigation ensued. For a professor at Columbia Law, Franke managed to break a number of Columbia's "laws," including: 1. Discriminating against Israelis in violation of Columbia policies 2. Retaliating against a professor who made a complaint against her by releasing his name to a reporter 3. Using social media to target those who made complaints against her.

Katherine Franke’s Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia), Justifying Hamas War Crimes & Support for Terrorists

Katherine Franke has justified Hamas war crimes, expressed support for terrorists, promoted violent protests and spread hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism.

Franke showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. 

Franke is a former Columbia professor with leadership positions in multiple national anti-Israel activist groups that endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In January 2025, Franke announced that she had been effectively terminated from Columbia following an investigation into discriminatory statements she made about Israeli students at the university.

Franke has also justified Hamas terrorism after its atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023. The attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Israel banned Franke from entering the country in April 2018 while Franke was serving as the chair of the board of trustees of the anti-Israel organization Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Franke was deported back to the United States alongside CCR executive director Vincent Warren.

Franke served as chair of the board of trustees of CCR from October 2018 to July 2021.

From August 2020 to May 2021, Franke was a member of the steering committee of the academic advisory council for the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

On October 12, 2023, Franke tweeted that she was “honored” to have joined the board of directors of the anti-Israel organization Palestine Legal.

As of March 2024, Franke was listed on the Columbia Law School (Columbia Law) website as a professor of law specializing in gender and sexuality law and racial justice.

As of the same date, Franke was also listed as the founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and an executive committee member at Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender (ISSG) and the Center for Palestine Studies.

Franke received a doctorate in law from Yale University (Yale) in 1998. Franke also graduated from Northeastern University (Northeastern) School of Law with a JD in 1986 Franke was listed as the first signatory in an October 30, 2023 statement written during Israel’s war against Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attacks. The statement, which Franke promoted online, called [p. 2] the terror attacks a “military response” against Israel by “an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.” 

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

The letter that Franke signed was titled [p. 1]: “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.”

The letter that Franke signed defended [p. 1] Columbia students who had signed on to a statement that described the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023, as a “military action” within the “larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

The letter claimed [p. 2] that the student statement aimed to “recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.”

The same letter also stated [p. 2]: “...one could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”

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