Democrats are watching with glee and Republicans are aghast as the Heritage Foundation implodes over its leadership’s relationship with commentator Tucker Carlson and his softball interview with Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white nationalist. Heritage board members and scholars have resigned in outrage. Principle matters more than a good job. Scholars such as Chris DeMuth, Stephen Moore, and more than half the members of Heritage’s Task Force on Antisemitism, who severed ties with the foundation over the scandal, simply refused to accept any antisemitism. Legal fellow Amy Swearer put her job on the line when she criticized Heritage President Kevin Roberts in an internal meeting. It’s always easy to virtue signal, but true honor comes at a personal cost. DeMuth, Moore, and Swearer have demonstrated honor.
The question for Democrats and progressives who lionize the United Nations and view traditional Heritage conservatism with disdain is whether, in an analogous situation, they would act with such personal honor.
In the past, the answer was no. When former Irish President Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, sponsored an antisemitic conference in Durban, South Africa, one so over-the-top that Colin Powell, who tolerated antisemitism within his own staff, withdrew the United States delegation. Robinson’s conference did not age well. In 2021, more than 30 countries boycotted a U.N. meeting to mark its anniversary.
Robinson might represent the polite antisemitism common in European palaces and diplomatic parlors rather than the rabid antisemitism Fuentes embodies, but she is increasingly the exception rather than the rule at the U.N.
Consider the antics of Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. On July 1, 2025, the United States Mission to the United Nations released a statement condemning Albanese’s “years-long pattern of virulent antisemitism” and her “malignant antisemitism and support for terrorism.” France and Germany jointly condemned a 2024 post in which she justified Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter of Jews. She dismissed U.S. criticism due to its subjugation to a “Jewish lobby.” She has posted images and memes comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and wrote an open letter castigating the BBC for having “the Israeli lobby … inside [its] veins and system.” Rather than condemn Hamas, she told the designated terrorist group that it has a “right to resist.”
Despite numerous calls for her removal, however, the U.N. renewed Albanese’s tenure. Nor is Albanese alone. Miloon Kothari, an Indian scholar who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on adequate housing, once said social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby.” Kothari, however, at least apologized, though antisemitism continued to infuse his work. U.N. Watch’s Hillel Neuer regularly juxtaposes the U.N.’s obsessive focus on the world’s only Jewish state to the detriment of far more serious situations and real violations of rights in North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
The question then becomes for progressives and policymakers: If Heritage can reject antisemitism, why not expect the same from the U.N.? Some U.N. officials may hide behind bureaucracy. The U.N. Human Rights Council appoints U.N. special rapporteurs, and so Jürg Lauber, the permanent representative of Switzerland to the U.N. in Geneva, bears more direct responsibility.
WHAT WILL AND WON’T MATTER IN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS FROM TUESDAY’S RESULTS
Still, this is weaselly. After all, the U.N. is supposed to be a paradigm of principle. Where are the U.N. officials who argue that they cannot be part of an organization that increasingly fuels blood libel and one of the world’s oldest hatreds? Where is U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres or any staff member from within his inner circle? Where is Nazila Ghanea, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, or her staff? Where are the heads of any other U.N. agencies? Or do they all check moral clarity at the door for the sake of free travel, expedited lines at airports, and tax-free salaries?
Heritage’s leadership deserves scorn, but its staff showed the rot did not permeate the whole institution. Unfortunately, the silence of U.N. staff in the wake of repeated Albanese scandals suggests that the U.N. as an institution may be irredeemable.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.