Francesca Albanese awarded honorary doctorate, despite objections from Jewish groups

Albanese took up the post in 2022 and was reappointed to the post in 2025, despite a series of objections from bodies and parliamentarians around the world including the US government, the World Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League.

Critics view Albanese as a strongly anti-Israel, with her comments and social media posts since October 7 expressing inflammatory and offensive views.

In one social media post, for example, she stated that the Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel on October 7 were a “reaction to Israel's oppression.”

Commenting on the decision to award Albanese with the honorary doctorate, University of Ghent rector Petra De Sutter and vice-rector Herwig Reynaert said in a statement: “Just, combative, and with a great sense of responsibility: that's the best way to describe Francesca Albanese.

“Her commitment to human rights and international justice is exceptional, and she deserves our support and admiration for her perseverance in the fight against structural injustice.

“The honorary doctorate that we, together with the University of Antwerp and Vrije Universiteit Brussel [Free University of Brussels], are awarding to Francesca Albanese is a special tribute to her contributions to society."

The rector of the University of Antwerp, Herwig Leirs, praised Albanese’s "determination in publishing truthful reports on the condition in the occupied Palestinian territories, with particular focus on Gaza in recent years".

And the University of Ghent wrote on its website: “despite intimidation, she continues to champion the protection of fundamental rights and international law as an instrument for justice”.

The Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium’s highest ranked university, was invited to join the other universities in honouring Albanese but it declined, according to local media.

Belgian Jewish groups previously expressed their concern at the decision to recognise Albanese with the honorary doctorate following an announcement earlier this year.

The Dutch-speaking Forum of Jewish Organisations (FJO) said at the time: “Her repeated comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are perceived as Holocaust trivialisation and antisemitic under the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition, and the US government also labels it as such.

"This sends the wrong message to students and is in no way an example of academic integrity or ethics.”

The French-speaking Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium (CCJOB) joined the FJO in calling on the Free University of Brussels to revoke the honour.

In 2014, Albanese sparked outrage when she suggested that the US and other countries were being influenced by the “Jewish lobby” when it came to their policies concerning Israel and Gaza.

Commenting on the Gaza War that was taking place at the time, she said: "America and Europe [are] subjugated by the Jewish lobby and, by sense of guilt for the Holocaust of others, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed – the Palestinians."

She later apologised for the remarks, saying they were “infelicitous, analytically inaccurate and unintendedly offensive” adding that the term “Jewish lobby” is one she would “not use today”.

In August 2022, she posted on X: “Palestinians' right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people. An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful.”

And less than a year before October 7 2023, Albanese appeared to justify violent resistance as she took part in an official Hamas conference.

Addressing the terror group’s Council on International Relations on “the impact of the Israeli blockade” in November 2022, she said while speaking by video link: “You have a right to resist this occupation. Israel says ‘resistance equals terrorism’, but an occupation requires violence.”

Six weeks after the terror attacks on Israel, the lawyer used the crimes of Hitler’s Germany as a reference point for the Israeli military response to Hamas, posting: "Fellow Europeans, Italians, Germans, after the Holocaust, we should instinctively know that Genocide starts with dehumanising the other. If Israel's current attack [on] Palestinians doesn't prompt our strong reaction, the darkest page of our recent history has taught us nothing."

Months later, she publicly took issue with the way the French president, Emmanuel Macron, labelled the atrocity in which 1,200 men, women and children in Israel were murdered by Hamas the “greatest antisemitic massacre of our century”.

Albanese posted: “No, Mr [Macron]. The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in reaction to Israel's oppression. France [and] the international community did nothing to prevent it. My respects to the victims.”