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Campus Watch January 16, 2025

A roundup of incidents, good and bad, happening on school campuses.
[additional-authors]
January 16, 2025

Columbia Prof Retires After Investigation Says She Discriminated Against Israelis

Columbia University Law Professor Katherine Franke is retiring after an investigation concluded that she discriminated against Israelis.

The Times of Israel (TOI) reported on Jan. 10 that Franke was investigated after she said on Democracy Now! last year that “So many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service. They’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.” She also claimed in the interview that three Israeli exchange students who had just completed military service had sprayed “pro-Palestinian students with this skunk waters,” when in actuality the spray was a “fart spray” gag, per TOI. A third-party law firm that conducted the investigation determined that Franke’s comments on Democracy Now! violated university policy prohibiting discrimination; additionally, the law firm concluded that Franke violated university policy regarding retaliation after she gave the name of a professor who filed a complaint against her to a journalist and targeting those who filed the complaint on social media.

When TOI reached out to Franke for comment, she sent them a statement that read in part: “The University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters. 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.”

National SJP Call for “Land Back,” “Eradication of U.S. Imperialism” As Solution to LA Fires

National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) posted a Jan. 11 thread to X contending that the solutions to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles were “land back,” “reparations” and “death to imperialism.”

The anti-Israel organization argued that the fires were “manufactured” as a result of “corporate greed,” “climate colonialism” and “prohibition of Indigenous land stewardship practices by the settler colonial government.” “We recognize the necessity that Indigenous land stewardship poses to the survival of our ecologies, and we underscore the comparisons that can be drawn between the settler ecologies that have ravaged native lands in both Turtle Island and Palestine,” NSJP wrote in the thread. “As settler colonial regimes continue their resource extraction through imperialistic campaigns across the globe, climate collapse draws near. The only solution is land back and the complete eradication of US imperialism, and in turn, the militarism that has perpetuated this ongoing climate catastrophe. We stand with those affected not only in LA but globally, where the devastation of imperialism reaches its peak.”

Kathryn Paisner, founder and principal of the KP2 LLC firm that provides research, organic chemistry and patent search services, posted to X: “Are they high? Wildfires burned many more acres in the pre-colonial era than they do today.”

Poll: Majority of Yale Students Believe Israel’s War in Gaza is “Genocidal”

A survey released by the Buckley Institute on Jan. 5 found 55% students at Yale University believe that Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip is “morally wrong and genocidal.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the students that believe that acknowledged that the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas was also wrong; 34% believe that Israel’s war is justified as self-defense while 8% believe that Hamas was simply engaging in resistance on Oct. 7. Additionally, the survey––which was conducted during the fall––found that a plurality of students were opposed to divestment (36%); among those that favored divestment, 31% supported divesting from Israel, while 27% supported divesting from Russia, 20% supported divesting from Iran, and 12% supported divesting from China.

Canadian University No Longer Employs Prof Convicted of Terrorism

Carleton University, which is located in Ottawa, Canada, announced that it is no longer employing Hassan Diab, who was convicted of bombing a Paris synagogue in 1980.

The university said in a Jan. 9 statement to the National Post: “Hassan Diab is a former part-time contract instructor who taught a course at the university last fall. He is not in the employment of Carleton. Please note that, other than current employment status, the university does not disclose personal employment information due to privacy considerations.” Diab had taught a course on social justice at the university during the fall.

As previously reported in Campus Watch, the 1980 terror attack in which Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian academic, was convicted of resulted in four dead and dozens injured; a French court had sentenced him to life in prison. According to the National Post, friends of Diab’s have alleged that he was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group. Diab has denied involvement in the bombing. B’nai Brith Canada lauded the university in a post on X “for taking the necessary steps to rectify this grave misstep” and called for Diab to be extradited to France.

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