Columbia retires professor over Gaza

Amira Howeidy , Tuesday 14 Jan 2025

New York’s Columbia University has allegedly forced legal scholar Katherine Franke to retire for defending students demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza

Columbia retires professor over Gaza
Franke

 

In January 2024, two Israeli students at New York’s Columbia University sprayed demonstrations in support of Palestine with a substance that left many with symptoms such as severe nausea, abdominal and chest pain, and irritated eyes, with some requiring hospitalisation.

The spraying of the substance, widely thought to be a possible chemical attack, led to the suspension of the two Israeli students, one of whom was a former soldier in the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) known as the IDF, by Columbia University.

 

A pro-Palestine rally at the steps of Lowe Library, Colombia University, New York

 

At least one hospital case cited by the UK newspaper the Guardian at the time, was diagnosed in hospital with “chemical exposure.”

When long-term Columbia University Law School professor Katherine Franke spoke out publicly in defence of students’ right to protest in favour of a ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza, she became the subject of a defamation campaign, including by the US Congress, and intimidation tactics.

Earlier this week, Franke announced that she could no longer tolerate the hostile environment that had left her with no option but to leave Columbia University.   

The university had created a toxic environment making it impossible to conduct legitimate debate around the war in Palestine such that she could no longer teach or carry out research, Franke said.

On 10 January, she announced that Columbia University had effectively terminated her tenure under the more “palatable” form of retirement and had deprived her of significant rights and privileges that are provided to all retired faculty as a matter of policy.

Meanwhile, Columbia University paid the Israeli student who had sprayed the protesters $395,000 as a settlement after he sued the institution for suspending him on the grounds that the substance had not been proven to be toxic.

After initially suspending both Israeli students for 18 months following the attacks in January 2024, the university launched an investigation into a potential hate crime with the police which concluded, months later, that the substance was “fart spray” and not “illicit” as previously reported.

The student protest movement that swept many universities in the US and elsewhere in the 2023-2024 academic year demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and divestment from Israel and Israeli institutions has been compared in size and scale to the 1970 student protests against the Vietnam War.

However, contrary to the Vietnam War backlash, the Gaza anti-war student movement was quashed by a climate of oppression on college campuses, rights groups have charged.

In a statement, Franke summed up the actions of multiple actors against her for her vocal support for anti-war students since the protests began more than a year ago. In one of her interviews with the independent Democracy Now! show in January 2024, which discussed the demonstrations, Franke condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on the Columbia University campus with the chemical that caused significant injuries.

She explained that the individuals who had sprayed the students with a chemical were Israeli students who were enrolled in Columbia’s joint degree programme with Tel Aviv University and had recently performed military service in Israel.

Citing the history of attacks against Palestinian students and their allies at Columbia University by Israeli students who had recently completed military service in Israel, Franke cautioned against the university’s laxity in addressing this pattern of harassment and not taking it seriously enough.

“I have long had a concern that the transition from the mindset required of a soldier to that of a student could be a difficult one for some people, and that the university needed to do more to protect the safety of all members of our community,” she said.

“Over the last year, I have had several people posing as students come to my office to seek my advice about student protests while they were secretly videotaping me and then edited versions of those recordings were published on right-wing social media sites,” she wrote in a statement.

After an intense Congressional hearing in April 2024 with then Columbia University president Minouche Shafik about the protests, the latter accepted inaccurate accusations levelled against Franke by members of Congress.

In February 2024, two professors from Columbia University filed a complaint against Franke for allegedly harassing Israeli students on campus with the university’s Office of Equal Employment and Affirmative Action, charging that comments Franke had made on Democracy Now! amounted to harassment of Israeli members of the Columbia community in violation of university policies.

Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said that Franke was another victim of “the pro-Israelism that is turning universities, and other spaces of public life, into places of obscurantism, discrimination and oppression.”

 

* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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