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Thursday, January 16, 2025
No, Katherine Franke Was Not Fired by Columbia Law School
You may have read about Prof. Katherine Franke’s “termination” from her tenured position at the Columbia University Law School, but it turns out there is more to the story. My new essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education takes a deeper dive into the case, concluding that she was not fired at all. Here is the gist:
Katherine Franke announced earlier this month that she had been forced out of her tenured position at Columbia University’s law school because of her pro-Palestine activism. The Center for Constitutional Rights, where Franke once served as board chair, called it an “egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian-rights advocacy.” The president of the American Association of University Professors said Columbia’s actions were “truly shameful,” declaring that the organization “stands with “Professor Franke and against this repression of pro-Palestinian speech.”
These and other expressions of solidarity, however, all appear to have been based solely on Franke’s side of the story, which she posted in a two-page statement on January 10. Franke detailed what she called her “termination,” following an “unjustified finding” that her “public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university nondiscrimination policy.”
Franke’s statement is, at best, misleading. It contains substantial omissions. She was not terminated by Columbia, although she was found responsible for harassing Israeli students on the basis of national origin.
You can read the entire piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Paywalled, but most university libraries have subscriptions.)
Posted by Steve Lubet on January 16, 2025 at 06:00 PM | Permalink
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