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More Details Emerge About Departure of Anti-Israel Prof From Columbia

More Details Emerge About Departure of Anti-Israel Prof From Columbia

“a termination dressed up in more palatable terms”

We covered the story of this professor leaving the school recently. Now there is more to the story.

From Quillette:

The Decline and Fall of Katherine Franke

On 10 January 2025, Katherine Franke announced her departure from the Columbia University Law School. After she issued a public statement, she had it republished on the Academe blog of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Law School dean Daniel Abebe claimed that Franke was merely bringing her planned retirement forward. Not true, Franke objected: “While the university may call this change in my status ‘retirement,’ it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”

Two of Franke’s law-school colleagues had filed a complaint after Franke gave an interview to Democracy Now on 25 January 2024, in which she claimed that IDF veterans enrolled at Columbia had a history of harassing other students but that the university was not taking this harassment seriously. The complaint stated that Franke had “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin.” An independent law-firm investigation found that she had violated university anti-discrimination policy.

Franke’s January 2024 remarks were occasioned by exaggerated accusations from anti-Zionist students following an unauthorised anti-Israel rally held on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library on 19 January. The students accused two IDF veterans of attacking them with a chemical weapon and falsely claimed that at least ten students required hospitalisation as a result. The student protestors said the chemical agent was “skunk spray” or “skunk water,” a non-lethal organic compound that Israel developed for crowd control. It leaves an odour like an open sewer that can cling to clothes for days and can cause headaches or vomiting in some people.

A short introduction accompanying the interview on the Democracy Now! website states: “Organizers allege the attack was carried out by two students who are former members of the Israeli military, using a chemical weapon known as ‘skunk’ that the Israeli military and security forces regularly deploy against Palestinians.” This feverish account makes it sound as though Columbia demonstrators are on the front lines of combat on the West Bank.

Curiously, not one of the four—at least—senior Columbia administrators on site during the protest experienced any of this. That is unsurprising, given that what was sprayed was not skunk spray but a commercial product marketed under a variety of prosaic names: Fart Spray, Wet Farts, Super Stink, etc.—a sometime favourite of high-school pranksters.

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Comments

Dean Robinson | January 26, 2025 at 2:14 pm

I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time this little incident quits making the rounds there will be calls to bring War Crime charges through The Hague for chemical warfare. Anything to snatch a headline or two that can be used to cow the meek.