Katherine M. Franke

Katherine M. Franke Katherine Franke was director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia University. She was also on the executive committees of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She was among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. Franke was the founder and faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, a think tank based at Columbia Law School that develops policy and thought leadership on the complex ways in which religious liberty rights interact with other fundamental rights. In 2021, Franke launched the ERA Project, a law and policy think tank to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice. Franke led a team that is researching Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies. After the de facto firing, Franke was listed as "retired."