Brown University trustee Joseph Edelman made headlines this week when he resigned in protest against the school’s upcoming vote on whether to divest from companies linked to Israel. Edelman contended that the decision reflects a troubling stance towards rising antisemitism on campus. Brown’s divestment vote is yet another data point in what Edelman correctly identified as an emerging trend on campus. Less publicized than the divestment vote is the fact that Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies has invited Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Palestine who is openly hostile to Jews and justified the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, to speak on Sept. 16.
On Oct. 7, when Hamas operatives invaded Israel and slaughtered more than 1,200 innocent civilians, world leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden rightly called this day of horrors the “deadliest day for Jews” since the Holocaust. Albanese, however, refuted that this attack was the “greatest antisemitic massacre of our century,” instead calling it a “reaction to the oppression of Israel.” She also wrote: “Today’s violence must be put in context. Almost six decades of hostile military occupation over an entire civilian population … are in themselves an aggression … .” Since Oct. 7, Albanese has consistently white-washed reports of the atrocities committed by Hamas.
Her comments were so egregious that major European leaders, who generally provide strong support to U.N. officials, condemned her. The French government responded: “The Oct. 7 massacre is the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century. Disputing it is a mistake. Seeming to justify it, by including the name of the United Nations, is a shame. These comments are all the more scandalous since the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism are at the heart of the founding of the U.N.” Similarly, the German Foreign Office wrote: “To justify the horrific terror attacks of [Oct. 7] and deny their antisemitic nature is appalling. Making such statements in a U.N. capacity is a disgrace … .”
Even before Oct. 7, on June 9, 2022, Albanese asserted, “[Israeli] occupation requires violence and generates violence … Palestinians have no other room for dissent than violence.” Albanese has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid,” “genocide” and “war crimes,” and has even equated Israel to Nazi Germany. Speaking at a conference in Gaza in November 2022, she told an audience that included Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials: “You have the right to resist this occupation.”
Albanese’s embrace of bigoted rhetoric runs deep. In a fundraising letter for the U.N. Relief Works Administration, Albanese wrote that “America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby.” When she was presented with recorded evidence of a terrorist boasting about murdering 10 Jews and telling his father and mother on the phone “Your son killed Jews!” Albanese defended the butcher by suggesting that it is common in Palestinian Arabic to refer to Israelis as Jews, so his words were political, not antisemitic.
Inviting Albanese to present at Brown University endangers the safety of Jewish students. Brown students suffered several alleged incidences of serious harm, including an incident when students pointed at a Jewish classmate’s Star of David jewelry and yelled “Zionist pig Jew.” The Anti-Defamation League gave Brown a D rating for antisemitism on campus.
These allegations even prompted an investigation of Brown by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which led to a resolution agreement committing the university to “Protecting the safety of its community, in particular supporting the needs and safety of its students, faculty, and staff who are Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim, Jewish, have ties to the region, and are feeling impacted by current events … . Taking the strongest possible stance against any form of discrimination and harassment including, but not limited to, antisemitism.” Brown is failing to uphold the spirit of this commitment by hosting Albanese.
Furthermore, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) is similarly failing students with its biased unit about Israel in the Choices Program. This social-studies curriculum for high-schoolers, whose resources are used by more than 1 million students, teaches that Jews are settler-colonialists who took over “native Palestinian land.” It also claims that the idea of the Jewish homeland and ancient Israel was a “myth” and “legend.”
Over the last year, American campuses have seen the consequences of enabling extremist voices and those sympathetic to Hamas. Considering Albanese’s history of bigoted rhetoric against Jews and her justification of Hamas’ crimes, it would only add to Brown’s failure to protect Jewish students by allowing her to speak. Brown’s community deserves better.
