Ms. Albanese is certainly entitled to her views, and there may have been an appropriate forum for her to speak on campus, but the SPIA Dean's Leadership Series was not it. Other speakers in the series have been leaders of countries, organizations, and business units. I am unaware of any leadership positions held by Ms. Albanese, and nowhere in the video of her appearance posted on the SPIA website does she speak of the kinds of complex problems facing decision-makers in the real world — presumably the point of this series. Rather, in her talk, everything is a black-and-white morality tale, and inconvenient facts matter less than sweeping anti-Zionist generalizations.
PAW’s writeup here was good, but some further details of her talk show how ill-advised the invitation extended to her was. I was struck by how Ms. Albanese refused to engage with precise definitions of genocide, and deal with actual facts on the ground, waving such details away as “semantics.” One thing that was especially galling was how, at the 35-minute mark or so in the SPIA video, Albanese explicitly says that annexation, even de jure annexation, is like rape, and that, in that context, “everything was permitted to Israel.” This is quite extraordinary — the only Palestinian area ever de jure annexed by Israel is East Jerusalem, in 1980. Was the formal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 truly a “rape” where “everything was permitted to Israel”? If so, then no wonder that she minimizes Hamas’ sexual violence, as Max Meyer ’27 has claimed — the word “rape” means nothing, if it can mean anything.
Meanwhile, at minute 39 or so, she makes an unclear reference to a nation that is “stingy and stubborn” (to laughter from the interviewer). Her willingness to traffic in lazy national stereotypes comes through loud and clear. She closes the lecture by speciously claiming that early Zionists said, “Let us colonize Palestine the way the French colonized Algeria and the Brits have colonized India,” followed by the extraordinary declaration that “antisemitism is a European thing, because racism is a European thing.”
Her patent wholesale dismissal of non-European antisemitism is ahistorical but explains her absurd declaration in the interview’s question period (not captured in the SPIA video) that Hamas is not motivated by antisemitism. Finally, in response to the question asked by Max Meyer ’27, it should be noted that she ended by asserting that his alleged indifference to Palestinian suffering “speaks to your humanity” — to applause from her admirers in the room.
Ethnic stereotypes, completely ahistorical claims, and ad hominem attacks on undergraduates: Is this the stuff of “leadership through mentorship,” the alleged mission of the SPIA Dean’s Leadership Series?
Ms. Albanese is certainly entitled to her views, and there may have been an appropriate forum for her to speak on campus, but the SPIA Dean's Leadership Series was not it. Other speakers in the series have been leaders of countries, organizations, and business units. I am unaware of any leadership positions held by Ms. Albanese, and nowhere in the video of her appearance posted on the SPIA website does she speak of the kinds of complex problems facing decision-makers in the real world — presumably the point of this series. Rather, in her talk, everything is a black-and-white morality tale, and inconvenient facts matter less than sweeping anti-Zionist generalizations.
PAW’s writeup here was good, but some further details of her talk show how ill-advised the invitation extended to her was. I was struck by how Ms. Albanese refused to engage with precise definitions of genocide, and deal with actual facts on the ground, waving such details away as “semantics.” One thing that was especially galling was how, at the 35-minute mark or so in the SPIA video, Albanese explicitly says that annexation, even de jure annexation, is like rape, and that, in that context, “everything was permitted to Israel.” This is quite extraordinary — the only Palestinian area ever de jure annexed by Israel is East Jerusalem, in 1980. Was the formal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 truly a “rape” where “everything was permitted to Israel”? If so, then no wonder that she minimizes Hamas’ sexual violence, as Max Meyer ’27 has claimed — the word “rape” means nothing, if it can mean anything.
Meanwhile, at minute 39 or so, she makes an unclear reference to a nation that is “stingy and stubborn” (to laughter from the interviewer). Her willingness to traffic in lazy national stereotypes comes through loud and clear. She closes the lecture by speciously claiming that early Zionists said, “Let us colonize Palestine the way the French colonized Algeria and the Brits have colonized India,” followed by the extraordinary declaration that “antisemitism is a European thing, because racism is a European thing.”
Her patent wholesale dismissal of non-European antisemitism is ahistorical but explains her absurd declaration in the interview’s question period (not captured in the SPIA video) that Hamas is not motivated by antisemitism. Finally, in response to the question asked by Max Meyer ’27, it should be noted that she ended by asserting that his alleged indifference to Palestinian suffering “speaks to your humanity” — to applause from her admirers in the room.
Ethnic stereotypes, completely ahistorical claims, and ad hominem attacks on undergraduates: Is this the stuff of “leadership through mentorship,” the alleged mission of the SPIA Dean’s Leadership Series?