I'm trying to write a method like the below where a list of fields (a subset of all the fields) is passed in as a parameter and has their column values set to null. I would be happy of I could get a method with just the fields as a parameter like below, but having the model as a parameter would be even better. from my_project.my_app.models import MyModel def nullify_columns (self, null_fields): field_names = MyModel._meta.get_all_field_names() for field in field_names: if field in null_fields: # The below line does not work because I'm not sure how to # dynamically assign the field name. MyModel.objects.all().update( (MyModel.get_field(field).column) = None) Right now I have something like if 'column1' in list_of_fields: MyModel.objects.all().update(column1 = None) if 'column2' in list_of_fields: MyModel.objects.all().update(column2 = None) etc. which is horrible, but works.