UAntwerpen, UGent, and VUB award Francesca Albanese an honorary doctorate — Belgian universities are getting it completely wrong

On April 2, Francesca Albanese received an honorary doctorate from no fewer than three Flemish universities (UAntwerpen, UGent, VUB) at the Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp.

This was the first time these three universities had jointly awarded an honorary doctorate.

The fact that Albanese was granted this honour by Flemish universities is troubling. To be sure, she completed her law degree at the University of Pisa and is the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories. In this role, Albanese is an independent expert who investigates the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories and reports on it to the UN Human Rights Council. Albanese is therefore not a salaried UN employee.

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However, the UN and the UN Human Rights Council are not institutions that can be regarded as particularly neutral with respect to Israel. The UN Human Rights Council has adopted more resolutions against Israel than against all other countries combined. It should also be noted that Israel is a democracy with a functioning rule of law, while the vast majority of countries in the UN are dictatorial, unfree, Global South and/or Islamic countries that do not hesitate to condemn Israel at every turn.

In this regard, Albanese is the Western “puppet” the UN uses to cast Israel in an unjustifiably negative light and thereby repeatedly condemn it. UN Watch https://unwatch.org/hillelneuer/  - the organization of Canadian human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer https://x.com/HillelNeuer -keeps careful track of all the actions Albanese and the UN undertake to portray Israel unfairly as the aggressor. The list is endlessly long.

Albanese can be seen as a highly fanatical, activist Israel-hater. She never misses an opportunity to frame Israel and portray it as the aggressor. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, her statements have become increasingly extreme.

A selection of her statements:

• After Hamas’s brutal attack on innocent civilians on October 7, 2023, and the endless rocket fire on Israel, she said that “violence inevitably begets violence.”

• “Israel is the common enemy of humanity,” after which the French foreign minister demanded her resignation.

• She claimed on April 1, 2026, at a conference in Berlin that European dogs are being trained and sold to Israel to rape Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

• Albanese shared an AI-generated photo supposedly showing the body bags of children killed in Iran. She refuses to delete the photo, even after it became clear that it was fake.

• Albanese claims that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.

• According to Albanese, Israel is guilty of “genocide profits.”

Albanese has made many more statements, but some of those are disputed, so we will not mention them here.

The fact that Albanese claims there is genocide in Gaza, without any evidence or judicial ruling whatsoever for genocide, says enough. It is Hamas that seeks to commit genocide against innocent Jews, and Israel is defending itself against this. She is therefore structurally turning the reality of the situation upside down. If Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2006, has been firing rockets nonstop at innocent Israeli civilians since that year, it is difficult to claim that Israel is the one murdering innocent civilians in a genocide. If Israel had wanted to commit genocide, it could have done so within a single day. Why, then, has Israel been sending IDF soldiers into Gaza for two years, with all the risks that entails?

Albanese’s statements therefore do not hold up, and even though she is a UN human rights rapporteur, she would do better not to make random claims that are factually incorrect.

In addition, Albanese has not physically been in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The reporting coming out of Gaza either comes from the IDF, which Albanese assigns no value to, or from the terrorist movement Hamas, which should not be considered reliable.

Despite all this, the three Flemish universities thought it was a good idea to award Albanese an honorary doctorate. Universities should stand for independent and critical truth-seeking, but there is no sign of that here.

What the Flemish universities are doing is going along with the mob in order to please a large part of their extremely woke, anti-Western students. There is no other explanation. The quality of university research and education will not improve because of this. If, as an educational institution, instead of conducting independent research, you choose activism in order to please a loud, extreme minority, you are treading on thin ice.

In addition, universities claim to do everything they can to be inclusive and not discriminate against minorities. The Jewish minority at our universities is being attacked and discriminated against on an extreme scale. It is becoming almost impossible for Jewish students and staff to openly identify as Jewish or for people (Jews and non-Jews alike) to stand behind Israel.

All of this is reminiscent of the 1930s.All of this evokes memories of the 1930s. “Never again,” Europe says in chorus, while in the meantime a policy is unfolding that is not imposed by governments, but rises to the surface in all kinds of ways from the depths of society.

It is alarming that Flemish universities are rewarding a hateful and extremely activist figure like Francesca Albanese, who demonstrably spreads falsehoods, with an honorary doctorate.

It would do the Flemish government credit if it froze the flow of funds to these hate palaces of education until the wind starts blowing in a different direction.

Image credits: Dom Fou via Unplash