|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Later this month, the University of Chicago is hosting a roundtable discussion — under the banner of “Grappling With Genocide” — featuring panelists with documented histories of antisemitic rhetoric.
The event — taking place on Monday, April 21, at Swift Hall — is being organized by the University of Chicago’s Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, and Center for Middle Eastern Studies, with co-sponsors including the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Global Studies, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, Chicago Center on Democracy, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.
“This roundtable asks how mass atrocities in the past can shed light on the horrors happening today in Palestine, Sudan, and elsewhere,” the event’s registration page says. “What are the affordances and limits of genocide as a legal category? What can we expect from international legal regimes, governments, institutions like the university, and movements for global solidarity, in stopping genocide?”
The list of panelists includes Francesca Albanese (United Nations), Leila Sadat (Washington University School of Law), Omar Shakir (Human Rights Watch), Omer Bartov (Brown University), Nisrin Elamin (University of Toronto), and Elizabeth Oglesby (University of Arizona), with Darryl Li (University of Chicago) and Natacha Nsabimana (University of Chicago) serving as moderators.
Albanese’s title at the UN is “Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Last year, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) urged Albanese’s firing following an X post in which she likened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Her litany of public expressions of antisemitism date as far back to 2014, when commenting on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip she asserted, “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish Lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines.”
Ahead of UN Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs’s upcoming visit to @UChicago, CAM Public Affairs Officer @NatSanandaji breaks down Albanese’s long track record of demonizing Jews and the State of Israel.
Antisemites must not be given platforms to spout their hatred unanswered! pic.twitter.com/R2B7LVpD2h
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) April 2, 2025
Last October, then-U.S, Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Albanese “unfit for her role” given her long track record of antisemitism.
“The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
Another problematic panelist is Shakir, who was expelled from Israel in 2019 over his support for the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The University of Chicago’s decision to offer such speakers a platform to spread antisemitic vitriol and lies without being challenged follows a familiar and troubling pattern in contemporary academia — the silencing of voices that could provide factual counterpoints, expertise, and nuance.
We implore all those concerned by this dangerous hate fest to speak out and contact the University of Chicago administration to demand that action be taken to rectify the forum’s clear imbalance and bias. Institutions of higher education must not be complicit in legitimizing antisemitism and fostering extremism.
University of Chicago administration email addresses: President Paul Alivisatos – president@uchicago.edu, Provost Katherine Baicker – kbaicker@uchicago.edu, Vice President and Secretary of the University Lori Berko – lberko@uchicago.edu, Vice President for Communications Paul Rand – prand@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago’s social media accounts: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
Guess who’s been invited by @UChicago to lead a so-called debate that’s shaping up to be an antisemitic spectacle? None other than @FranceskAlbs — widely known for promoting antisemitic tropes and spreading hateful rhetoric against the Jewish state of Israel. Her record includes… pic.twitter.com/MRTHNFISRy
— Sacha Roytman (@SachaRoytman) March 30, 2025
