Far-left City Comptroller Brad Lander took money for his mayoral campaign from a radical anti-Israel Columbia University professor whose hateful rhetoric got her booted from the college, according to campaign finance records.
Lander, who has dubbed himself both a socialist and “progressive Zionist,” received $500 in April from ex-Columbia law professor Katherine Franke, who has previously claimed the Jewish state is conducting “genocide” in Gaza and defended students’ anti-Israel hate.
Columbia hired an outside law firm to investigate Franke over a claim she made in January 2024 to “Democracy Now,” that Israeli students at the Ivy were “known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.”
The investigator found in November that the professor’s comments violated several university policies, including disclosing a complainant’s name to a reporter and targeting her accusers on social media, according to a copy of the probe’s findings obtained by The Times of Israel. Franke, who retired this month, said the move was essentially “termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”
Sara Forman, executive director of the pro-Israel New York Solidarity Network, demanded Lander return Franke’s donation. His accepting the cash “tells us how deeply unserious and uncommitted he is to being an honest representative of New York’s Jewish community, she charged.
Franke initially denied making the contribution, but later claimed she had donated to a joint fundraiser event in May for Brad Lander and then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman “in support of both of them calling for a ceasefire.”
Lander did not respond to a request for comment.
