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SvennoJ on 12 January 2025
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Academics, lawyers voice support for pro-Palestinian professor pressured to leave Columbia

As we reported earlier, Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke says she has retired from Columbia University after coming under pressure for her support for pro-Palestinian students.

Noura Erakat, a professor at Rutgers University and human rights lawyer, said, “Columbia University’s mistreatment of Prof Katherine Franke is egregious.”

“She has resigned after 25 yrs of an illustrious academic career and commitment to her students because she decided there is nothing to return to- it is far too hostile,” Erakat added.

Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), described Columbia’s actions as “truly shameful” and said the AAUP stands with “Professor Franke and against this repression of pro-Palestinian speech”, in a post on X.



Activists back US professor ‘forced’ from Columbia over Palestine advocacy

Academics, lawyers and activists have voiced support for a US law professor who says she was pressured to leave Columbia University for her advocacy for pro-Palestinian students.

“Effective today, I have reached an agreement with Columbia University that relieves me of my obligations to teach or participate in faculty governance after serving on the Columbia law faculty for 25 years,” Katherine Franke, a tenured law professor at the Ivy League university in the United States, said in a statement last week.

“I have come to the view that the Columbia University 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,” Franke said.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Franke has become “another victim of the pro-Israelism that is turning universities, and other spaces of public life, into places of obscurantism, discrimination and oppression”.



Malala says ‘Israel has decimated entire education system’ in Gaza

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai says she would continue to call out Israel’s violations of international law and human rights in Gaza.

“In Gaza, Israel has decimated the entire education system,” she told a summit on girls’ education in Muslim nations, hosted by Pakistan and attended by representatives from dozens of countries.

“They have bombed all universities, destroyed more than 90 percent of schools, and indiscriminately attacked civilians sheltering in school buildings.”

Yousafzai was shot in the face by members of a Pakistani armed group when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2012, amid her campaigning for female education rights. She made a remarkable recovery after being evacuated to the United Kingdom and went on to become the youngest-ever Nobel Prize winner at the age of 17.