Lecture by Francesca Albanese and Eyal Weizman cancelled by the Free University of Berlin

A public lecture scheduled for 19 February 2025 at the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) was called off by the university's leadership. The session was to bring together Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, and Eyal Weizman, the British-Israeli founder of Forensic Architecture, around a legal and forensic reading of the situation in Gaza.

The university's president, Günter M. Ziegler, justified the decision by pointing to the sharply divided climate around the two guests and to safety conditions he described as impossible to anticipate. He also argued that activist groups had promoted the event so heavily that they looked like co-organisers, creating a risk of confrontation inside the hall. As a fallback, the FU proposed holding the discussion behind closed doors with online access.

The cancellation followed several public interventions. Israel's ambassador in Germany, Ron Prosor, wrote directly to Ziegler urging him to drop the event, calling it damaging to the university and to Berlin. Berlin's mayor, Kai Wegner (CDU), publicly demanded an immediate cancellation and pointed to the University of Munich as a model, LMU had already scrapped a separate Albanese lecture a few days earlier, likewise invoking security. Berlin's science senator, Ina Czyborra, questioned whether Jewish students could be kept safe at the event, while the German-Israeli Society accused the FU of tolerating antisemitism. Albanese's critics, including the Anti-Defamation League, have objected to her past comparisons between Israeli military conduct and the Nazi period, and to her rejection of an antisemitic motive behind the 7 October attack.

Weizman refused the closed-door format and said the two would come to the campus regardless and speak to whoever showed up, indoors or outside. Albanese described the episode as censorship and noted that no other country had denied her the ability to speak as an independent UN expert. A separate Berlin event with both speakers, organised by Mera25, had to be moved to another venue at short notice after the organisers reported heavy pressure from politicians and police; it eventually took place under close police supervision. Albanese also spoke at the offices of the newspaper Junge Welt on 18 February, where officers entered the premises against the editorial team's wishes, and delivered a streamed lecture to students on the 19th.

On 21 February, the Committee on Academic Freedom of the BRISMES wrote to Wegner, Czyborra and Ziegler demanding a public apology, a restated commitment to academic freedom, resistance to political pressure, and abandonment of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. The affair unfolded shortly after the Bundestag adopted a resolution on antisemitism in universities and schools, itself criticised by Jewish and non-Jewish organisations as a vehicle for silencing debate.