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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.
My research for this article included an examination of the public record, a review of Columbia’s final Investigation Determination (which has not been made public), information provided by university employees about the extensive findings in the underlying Investigation Report, exhibits attached to Franke’s appeal, and other relevant documents. I learned that Franke did not face discipline because she “referenced a history of harassment against Palestinians,” or for her “support of pro-Palestinian protesters.” Rather, two outside investigators concluded that, in an interview with Democracy Now! on January 25, 2024, she had “subjected Israeli members of the Columbia community to discriminatory harassment.”
Franke’s statement did mention the Democracy Now! interview, but she tellingly failed to include her own words. Here is the actual quotation that formed the basis for the finding against her: “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.”
Following at least a dozen complaints to Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, outside investigators from the Sher Tremonte law firm — who had been retained by the university, as Franke had requested — found that this comment lacked a factual basis and constituted a negative, unfounded stereotype about Israeli students, who comprise a protected class under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Columbia’s policies. Based on multiple interviews, the investigators also found that Franke’s comment had an adverse impact on Israeli students, causing them to experience isolation and distress and contributing to a hostile learning environment.
Franke’s public statement from earlier this month describes the interview as merely addressing “a history of harassment of Palestinians and their allies on our campus.” She claims only to have “condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on our campus with a toxic chemical that caused such significant injuries that several students were hospitalized,” saying that the spraying was done by Israeli students who had “recently performed military service in Israel.” According to Franke, “these facts were confirmed” by Columbia University.
Columbia’s Department of Public Safety quickly determined that the so-called toxic chemical was “a nontoxic, legal, novelty item that can be purchased online and in stores throughout the country.” An investigation by the student newspaper reported no significant injuries. Although several students apparently sought medical attention, there were no hospital admissions. Nor were Franke’s purported facts ever confirmed by the university, as she claimed.
Even if Franke believed the toxic-chemical story at the time of her Democracy Now! interview, it was irresponsible to repeat it a year later, after it had been disproven. It was even worse to attribute one student’s vile misconduct to a “pattern of harassment” by “so many” Israeli students “who had recently completed military service” (which would be virtually all of them, given Israel’s conscription law).
The contrived attribution of dangerousness to racial or national minorities has a long and disreputable history in the United States, from the antebellum era to recent falsehoods about a migrant-crime wave. Stamping Israelis as inclined to harassment was foreseeably likely to marginalize them among their classmates and instructors. Franke would surely demand the discipline of a professor who made a comparably negative generalization about alleged misconduct by “so many Palestinian students,” and rightly so.
The investigators found that Franke’s claims about harassment by Israelis at Columbia were not substantiated. They asked her to provide them with names or details of such instances, but she failed to do so. I posed the same question to her, through her attorney, but received no reply.
Franke was also found responsible for retaliating against two faculty members who initiated complaints against her by revealing their identities — confidential under Columbia regulations — to a reporter, and later reposting social-media content referring to them as “genocide advocates” and “McCarthyite bigots.” Her statement denies identifying the complainants, saying she had only confirmed their names when asked, but that is not so. In a story published on January 10, the reporter himself wrote that Franke “had named the complainants.” Corroborating this, I have an email from the reporter to a complainant which reads, “I heard from Professor Katherine Franke that you’re one of the professors who filed the complaint against her.” Nonetheless, Franke made the same denial to the investigators. They concluded that she had given the complainants’ names.
She does not even attempt to excuse the derogatory name-calling — although, as the investigators observed, she was on notice to refrain from retaliation that would expose the complainants to scorn or humiliation. Thus, the investigators found that her sharing of the post denigrated the complainants in a way that was calculated to draw condemnation, and which would discourage a reasonable person from filing a complaint or participating in an investigation.
Finally, there is Franke’s assertion that she was terminated by Columbia, which has led to reports that she was “forced out,” “pushed,” or threatened with firing. That would indeed be an extraordinarily severe penalty for a single sentence in an interview, or even for nasty retaliatory comments. There is no way to know the details of Franke’s negotiation with the Columbia administration, which resulted in what is technically an accelerated retirement, although obviously under stressful conditions.
It is far from clear, however, that Franke’s job was ever in serious jeopardy. Under Columbia policy, a determination that a respondent has “engaged in prohibited conduct” is to be “accompanied by a recommendation that the respondent’s supervisor(s) discipline the respondent ... and identify recommended sanctions.” In Franke’s case, however, the formal determination letter did not recommend a sanction, much less termination, saying only that the matter would be referred to “respondent’s supervisor for follow-up as deemed appropriate.”
And Franke’s appeal was still pending when she announced her departure from Columbia. Perhaps it would have succeeded if she had not abandoned it. An appendix to the appeal includes letters from students alleging incidents of harassment by Israelis, which were not submitted during the investigation.
Franke acknowledged that the determination, if upheld, would “go to my dean to impose a sanction.” As a tenured professor, however, Franke could not be fired by the law-school dean. Rather, she would be entitled to an entirely new proceeding before the university’s Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom, and Tenure Committee, which consists of 17 faculty members and no administrators. Given the support she has mustered from numerous colleagues, it seems vanishingly unlikely that she would have lost her job.
In reality, as Franke herself ultimately puts it, her decision to depart Columbia was because the “administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research.” That is an odd claim to make about a university with the first Center for Palestine Studies in the country, and which is the home of such noted Israel critics as Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, and Nadia Abu El-Haj.
Columbia denied my request for a copy of the lengthy Investigative Report. I was able to obtain and confirm information about its content and findings from university employees, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about harassment.
The entire process has obviously been a taxing ordeal for Franke, who took the steps she believed necessary under the circumstances. As I have taught my advocacy students, however, there is always another side to the story, which I have attempted to explore here. Nonetheless, I wish her well. The concluding line in Franke’s statement read, “I will always be a teacher, and am always learning.” I trust that is so.
