Barnard College is facing backlash for inviting United Nations official Francesca Albanese to speak on campus this week. Albanese has blamed the Jewish state for Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and compared Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
A pro-Israel U.N. watchdog is urging Columbia University's sister school to cancel Albanese’s Wednesday speech, warning that inviting the "internationally condemned anti-Semite" contributes to the "egregiously anti-Semitic hostile educational environment" on campus. The Wednesday event is hosted by Barnard's human rights, economics, and anthropology departments, the New York Post reported.
"This is exactly the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that has led to allegations of Columbia fostering an egregiously anti-Semitic hostile educational environment, and to allegations of the harassment, threats, and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students," UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a letter sent Monday to Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury and Columbia president Katrina Armstrong.
Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, has argued the Jewish state does not have a right to defend itself against Hamas and liked posts on X endorsing the anti-Semitic trope of the "Jewish billionaire class." She likened Netanyahu to Hitler in a July X post, and hours after the Oct. 7 attack, she said the "violence must be put into context." Albanese also said that the victims of Oct. 7 "were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression."
Albanese also accused Israel of committing genocide and advancing a "settler-colonial project in Palestine."
Columbia University was ground zero for anti-Israel student protesters last spring. In the letter, UN Watch criticized the Ivy League institution for "enabling" hundreds of students, faculty, and others to overtake the university’s South Lawn last spring, where "the harassment and abuse of Jewish and Israeli students only intensified, filled with calls for a global Intifada—the worldwide murder of Jews—and other anti-Semitic slogans and chants."
"By inviting Francesca Albanese, an internationally condemned anti-Semite and supporter of Hamas terrorism, Columbia will be subjecting itself to additional claims for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, New York Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law, and the Ku Klux Klan Acts," the letter reads.
Israel banned Albanese from the Jewish state in February. The International Legal Forum, an activist group of more than 4,000 lawyers, called on the United Nations to fire Albanese for her "anti-Semitism and virulent bias" and for "endorsing the murder of Israeli civilians, including children."
A Barnard spokesperson defended the event on campus.
"Barnard’s educational mission depends on the exploration of challenging ideas. The College has long permitted academic departments to host discussions and debates on difficult topics with speakers who represent a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds," the college told the Post.