By Awarding an Honorary Doctorate to Francesca Albanese, Ghent University Appoints Itself as the Ground Zero of European Antisemitism

On 2 April 2026, Ghent University, together with the University of Antwerp and the Free University of Brussels, will award a joint honorary doctorate to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. The ceremony will take place in the Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp.

This is not an academic footnote; it is a deliberate political act.
Antwerp is not just another city. It is widely known as the “Jerusalem of the North”, the historic and living heart of Belgian Jewry. And the date is anything but neutral: 2 April 2026 falls in the middle of Passover, the festival of liberation, of the exodus, of the right of the Jewish people to no longer be dependent on the goodwill of rulers.

Anyone who believes universities do not send messages through place, timing, and symbolism does not understand how power operates.

Honouring a Sanctioned Figure Is Not Academic Freedom, but Institutional Provocation

The core issue is now unmistakable: Francesca Albanese is under U.S. sanctions.
Not as a marginal case, but under what international observers have described as “terrorist-grade sanctions”: financial isolation, blocked assets, and prohibitions for U.S. persons and institutions to provide her with support.

This is not a matter of opinion. It is a formal geopolitical designation.

When a university publicly honours a person under U.S. sanctions, grants her an honorary title, and elevates her as a moral authority, it does more than “facilitate dialogue.” It actively undermines the sanctions regime and transfers reputational and legitimising capital to an individual deemed problematic by the United States.

If one wishes to be consistent, one must say what logically follows:
if Albanese is under U.S. sanctions, then Ghent University itself should fall under U.S. sanctions as well.
Not symbolically. Not rhetorically. Concretely.

An institution that launders sanctioned actors through academic prestige acts against sanctions. That is not free speech; it is institutional complicity.

This Is Not an Isolated Incident, but a Pattern

This honorary doctorate did not emerge in a vacuum.
In 2024, Ghent University severed all institutional ties with Israeli universities—collectively, indefinitely, and without distinction between institutions, researchers, or disciplines.

That is not “critical reflection.” It is collective academic punishment.

Now comes the next step: an institution that isolates Israel academically simultaneously crowns one of the most outspoken anti-Zionist figures on the international stage. Not through a debate, not through a panel, but through an honorary title—the strongest symbolic instrument a university possesses.

Petra De Sutter: From Physician and Politician to Rector of Belgium’s Most Antisemitic University

All of this takes place under the leadership of Petra De Sutter.

Wikipedia describes her plainly:

“Petra De Sutter (born 10 June 1963) is a Belgian transgender gynaecologist and politician, who served as federal Deputy Prime Minister. Following her term, she was elected rector of Ghent University.”

That description is accurate—and precisely for that reason, relevant.

De Sutter is not a traditional academic administrator shaped primarily by scholarship and teaching. She is a political figure, deeply embedded for years in Groen, a party that has traded its original ecological core for moral absolutism, sanctions rhetoric, and ideological camp-thinking—the very same trajectory seen internationally in activist movements where climate discourse has been replaced by a toxic, polarising language on Israel.

As federal Deputy Prime Minister, De Sutter publicly demanded sanctions against Israel.
After that political career, she became rector of Ghent University—not despite her political profile, but because of it.

As if that were not enough, her tenure began with an academic credibility scandal: her rectoral opening speech contained fabricated and incorrect quotations, caused by unverified use of generative artificial intelligence.
A rector who claims the role of moral compass while failing to verify her own sources undermines the very foundation of the university.

Political absolutism combined with academic negligence is not accidental. It is a symptom.

Ghent Betrays Its Own History

That all this happens in Ghent makes it even more disturbing.
This is the same university where Nico Gunzburg, a Jewish jurist and dean, introduced criminological sciences. The same Gunzburg who donated a building to house the Criminological Institute. Ghent was once a bastion of rule-of-law thinking, pluralism, and intellectual integrity.

Today, that legacy is unrecognisable.

What is labelled “anti-Zionism” at Ghent University today is, in reality, the systematic denial of Jewish collective self-determination. The rejection of Israel’s right to exist—the only Jewish homeland in the world—while that right is granted without question to every other people.

That is not progressivism. It is selective moral hostility.

2 April 2026 Is a Moral Zero Point

On 2 April 2026, Ghent University states—without saying it explicitly, but unmistakably clearly:

• We honour a sanctioned UN figure.
• We do so in the heart of Jewish Belgium.
• We do so during Passover.
• We do so under the leadership of a former Deputy Prime Minister with an explicitly anti-Israel political agenda.

This is not coincidence. It is a message.

Ghent University no longer presents itself as a university, but as an ideological power centre—an institution that no longer seeks truth, but moral dominance; that does not organise debate, but canonises; that does not safeguard pluralism, but chooses sides.

Those who accept this normalise it.