Meet the queer, CRT professor who thinks Hamas has a 'right to resist'

Katherine Franke is a professor of law at Columbia University focusing on “sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.” 

On Saturday, Franke, who is also “on the Executive Committees of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Center for Palestine Studies,” posted a letter signed by dozens of Columbia faculty defending pro-Hamas students on campus. 

Columbia/Barnard faculty have signed an open letter supporting our students, making the point that identifying with the suffering of Gazans and historically contextualizing the current war in Israel/Gaza is not anti-Semitic. Please read and share. https://t.co/IXMCs2PxhN

— Katherine Franke (@ProfKFranke) October 28, 2023

The faculty-signed letter characterizes the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks as a “right to resist.” 

”One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation,” the document states. 

The so-called “salvo” resulted in over 1,400 people killed, mutilated, burned, raped, tortured, and captured. Campus Reform reported Monday morning that Hamas burned a baby alive in an oven. 

The same language appears in the student letter in question. 

In addition to invoking the “right to resist,” the Columbia students also denied Israel’s right to defend itself. 

”Israel does not have the right to defend its occupation,” the statement says. 

The Oct. 7 attacks took place in southern Israel not Gaza, which Israel vacated completely in 2005. 

Franke asserts on X that these views are “not anti-Semitic.”