The Israeli ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, reportedly sent an email to the university president requesting the cancellation of the event.
The Free University of Berlin in Germany has canceled an event that was scheduled to feature Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine.
The university’s president, Gunter Ziegler, made the announcement in a meeting with the university’s administration, the Middle East Monitor (MEMO) reported, citing German media on Wednesday.
Germany’s “Free University of Berlin” @FU_Berlin has banned UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese @FranceskAlbs from speaking at an event planned on its campus. The decision was made following orders from the Berlin Academic Senate, and the Science Senator Ina Czyborra (SPD) pic.twitter.com/jSJkZlZt5U
— Ghassan 𓂆 ☭ غسان (@GhassanKDE) February 12, 2025
Ziegler said that the administration decided that the event on February 19 “cannot be held as a public event with in-person attendance” due to “polarization and the unpredictable security situation.” He apparently suggested that the event should be held online, MEMO reported.
Israeli Envoy, Mayor Protest
The Israeli ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, sent an email to Ziegler requesting the cancellation of the event that Albanese was expected to attend, the report added.
“It is a shame for your university if Albanese will speak there. A disgrace for the entire academic community, a disgrace for the city of Berlin,” he wrote, according to the German Bild newspaper.
The Free University of Berlin has made an utter fool of itself, not to mention that it demonstrated its profound ignorance of what it means to be… free. https://t.co/AuO68KnPmb
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) February 12, 2025
The Governing Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, also weighed in on the event, saying: “I expect the FU to cancel the event immediately and send a clear signal against anti-Semitism. Just like the University of Munich did.”
He reportedly added, “Our universities are places of teaching and research, but also of imparting values and mutual respect.”
The event scheduled for February 19 was titled ‘Conditions of Life Calculated to Destroy – Legal and Forensic Perspectives on the Ongoing Gaza Genocide.’
Rapporteur’s Response
Following the cancellation, Albanese posted on X: “When I think that for 16 months Palestinian academics and teachers have kept teaching their students in tents or through mobile phones, while enduring carpet bombing, sniper fire, mass forcible displacement, starvation, trauma and grief – the “unpredictable security situation” claimed by @FU_Berlin truly strains credulity.”
When I think that for 16 months Palestinian academics and teachers have kept teaching their students in tents or through mobile phones, while enduring carpet bombing, sniper fire, mass forcible displacement, starvation, trauma and grief – the “unpredictable security situation”… https://t.co/RnJxWLZNI2
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) February 12, 2025
The event’s cancellation has been met with condemnation on social media, with one user saying: “We have a great democracy here when the mayor can order universities to exclude high-ranking representatives of the United Nations. And if he actually does it because he sees the UN as a threat, we are probably on the way to becoming a ‘rogue state’.”
Greek economist and politician, Yanis Varoufakis, said on X that the “Free University of Berlin has made an utter fool of itself, not to mention that it demonstrated its profound ignorance of what it means to be… free.”
‘Not Cancelling Commitment’
Eyal Weizman, the Director of Forensic Architecture, at the University of London, who was scheduled to share the platform with Albanese stated on X on Wednesday that: “The university might have canceled our event, but we are not canceling our commitment to lecture to the faculty, students and staff that invited us to engage in evidence-based legal analysis of the Israeli genocide in Gaza now spilling over to the West Bank.”
He added: “We will be there and will engage whoever comes to attend, whether inside or outside the building.”
The university might have cancelled our event, but we are not cancelling our commitment to lecture to the faculty, students and staff that invited us to engage in evidence based legal analysis of the Israeli genocide in Gaza now spilling over to the West Bank. https://t.co/WPWuvnX3QP
— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) February 12, 2025
“We refuse to turn this into a closed door meeting. We will sit outside the university if necessary, wherever freedom still exists in Germany,” Weizman continued.
Albanese, who has been vocal about Israel’s 15-month-long genocidal assault on Gaza, last month described Israeli practices in the West Bank as “criminal” and warned that Israel’s actions and pattern of conduct are “indicative of genocidal intent.”
The UN Special Rapporteur took to social media to call on the international community to intervene and stop the destructive Israeli operations, which she said have expanded to include all of the occupied territories, not just Gaza.
(PC, MEMO)
