Francesa Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, whom the U.S. government sanctioned in July for antisemitism, “is no longer affiliated with Georgetown University,” Anna Maria Mayda, director of the school’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, told JNS on Friday.
“U.S. institutions are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to U.S. sanctions,” she said.
Marco Rubio, U.S. secretary of state, said in July that “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”
Albanese was an affiliated scholar at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. That role didn’t make her a Georgetown employee, but it gave her access to school resources and certain opportunities for collaboration.
UN Watch said earlier in the week that Georgetown removed Albanese’s biography from its website. It was not clear when that change occurred.
Albanese said earlier this month, “I had an affiliation with a U.S. university. I used to lecture there. Everything has been cut down.”
Jonathan Harounoff, spokesman for the Israeli mission to the United Nations in New York, told JNS that “it’s unsurprising that a university entrusted with educating the next generation of leaders is severing ties with a U.S.-sanctioned individual with a long track record of deeply incendiary and antisemitic commentary, and of exploiting their elevated U.N. platform to demonize and isolate the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”
In July, the U.S. Treasury Department named Albanese as a specially designated national, forbidding all Americans and U.S. companies from doing business with her.
Albanese has drawn condemnations from the German and French governments, among others. (JNS sought comment from the Israeli mission to the United Nations.)
She became the first U.N. official subject to U.S. sanctions.
