University leaders’ failure to offer even feeble opposition to Netanyahu’s war crimes is among the most serious intellectual and moral failures in the history of Australian higher education. Nick Riemer with the story.
Last Monday, the University of Sydney’s new Chancellor, former Telstra boss David Thodey, opened his inaugural address to the university by criticising the ‘unacceptable rise of antisemitism’ in universities and society. Thodey committed to doing more to combat antisemitism – and, he added, ‘any form of discrimination’ – at the University of Sydney.
What this meant quickly became clear. The following day, university security shut down a campus bake sale by a student anti-racist group raising funds to support Gazans. Apparently, in 2024, with over 42000 killed in Palestine and Israel escalating its murderous spree into Lebanon,
the University of Sydney cannot tolerate a cake stall for people facing genocide.
The prohibition of the fundraiser was the latest in a series of repressive measures taken by the university, under its Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott, in response to the moral panic Israel lobbyists are generating over supposedly widespread antisemitism on campus. As in other institutions in Australia and around the world, these measures do not target antisemitism, but support for Palestine.
Palestine activism proscribed
Palestinian activism is being criminalised at the University of Sydney, just as it is around the country and throughout the Western world.
Student forums have been closed down or only allowed to proceed under intimidatory conditions of surveillance. The university’s disciplinary procedures have been weaponised against staff targeted by the Murdoch media for daring to oppose genocide.
In a move condemned by major civil liberties organisations like Amnesty, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and others, university management has even given itself the power to ban basic forms of political expression by staff and students. Meanwhile, the university continues to cultivate its links with the weapons industry, including with companies directly implicated in the war crimes being committed against Palestinians.
Students rally against Gaza atrocities – and the weapons industry which funds their universities
Simply expressing solidarity with Palestine or opposition to genocide is now viewed by the university as potential misconduct. Staff and students determined not to be silenced risk disciplinary sanctions.
At Western Sydney University several weeks ago, students were manhandled by police, with several arrested, for taking part in a pro-Palestinian sit-in that involved reading poetry, studying, and praying on their own university grounds.
No crisis of antisemitism
To try to justify this witch-hunt, one might have expected universities to provide evidence of large numbers of antisemitic incidents on campus. Nothing remotely approaching this has been done. It is clear to everyone except uncritical politicians, corporate university leaders and media propagandists ($) that there is no crisis of antisemitism at Sydney ($), WSU, or anywhere else.
As a Zionist colleague admitted to me recently, ‘classic Jew-hatred’ doesn’t exist at the University of Sydney. Instead, Zionists want us to believe that the mere expression of support for Palestine – Palestinian flags, slogans calling for freedom, equality and justice for Palestinians, criticism of Israel as an apartheid and intrinsically racist state – makes ‘Jewish’ people feel ‘distressed’ or ‘unsafe’ and is therefore inherently antisemitic.
The equation could not be more simple-minded: support for Palestine or criticism of Israel = distress for Jews = antisemitism.
Universities’ acceptance of this equation doesn’t just undermine the necessary struggle against real antisemitism; it directly bolsters support for Israel’s genocide.
Not once has any university administration taken any special measures to enquire into, let alone to alleviate, Palestinian students’ very real distress as they witness the sadistic murder of their relatives in Palestine and the totalitarian repression of their attempts to protest against it here.
In Australian universities today, making a Zionist uncomfortable is unthinkable. Still, nothing can stand in the way of investing in and soliciting partnerships with the weapons companies enabling Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian students’ relatives.
Netanyahu unopposed
University leaders’ failure to offer even the most feeble opposition to Netanyahu’s war crimes will stand among the most serious intellectual and moral failures in the history of Australian higher education.
Under pressure from Jillian Segal, Mark Dreyfus or Sarah Henderson, university authorities like Mark Scott or WSU’s George Williams have simply buckled. Nothing is sacred. No principle will be maintained: not the political independence of higher education, not respect for international law or anti-racism, and certainly not the principles of ‘academic freedom’, ‘leadership’ or commitment to a ‘better world’ that university spin doctors and marketing departments tirelessly generate, even as their Vice-Chancellors bulldoze right over them.
Gratifying the supporters of genocidal violence, it seems, comes naturally to the authoritarian neoliberals at the top of universities. As a result, universities’ obligations at the present moment are not a subject where any meaningful or rational debate is possible.
At the same time, they ignore academic freedom to crack down on Palestine supporters; they invoke it, apparently seriously, to justify the continuation of weapons-related research. Vice-Chancellors’ intellectual negligence and opportunism have been remarkable even to those of us who thought we were inured to it.
Among the rare sources of hope, the National Tertiary Education Union recently adopted the academic boycott of Israel as an official union policy at the national level. Students at Sydney and elsewhere have also decisively voted for their universities to cut ties with genocide.
Outside of this, prospects are exceptionally bleak, but Palestine supporters continue to campaign. The political and moral dereliction in universities is not limited to their most senior leadership.
A colleague from another part of the institution has told me that university staff should not even email their faculties to invite them to stand against the genocide in Palestine because some people find it ‘distressing’. Presumably, they would have said the same thing about resistance to Vietnam, apartheid South Africa, or the Holocaust.
This colleague’s willingness to use the language of safety to silence opposition to monstrous state crime sets them up well for significant professional success in university administration; to any principled person, the abject hypocrisy and immorality of their position, just like the hypocrisy and immorality of the genocidal university itself, need no further comment.
Editor’s Note: The University has rejected that it is ‘criminalising’ pro-Palestinian activism (statement below). MWM accepts that breaches of the tougher university misconduct guidelines cannot result in ‘criminal’ prosecution by the University.
Under the enhanced provisions of the Campus Access Policy, however, university Protective Services Staff can “detain alleged offenders [deemed to be involved in “vilification and hate speech”] for the purposes of delivering them to the Police”.
Serious vilification is a criminal offence in NSW. Police are regularly on campus at Sydney University and other universities around Australia dealing with pro-Palestinian protestors. No student has been charged with an act of violence.
It is fair to say both that the University has no powers to charge students criminally but also that activists may feel they are being treated like criminals.
Statement by Professor Annamarie Jagose, Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Sydney
We absolutely refute the claim the University is criminalising pro-Palestinian activism – and it is totally inaccurate to say we have given ourselves the power to ban basic forms of political expression by our community. It’s also untrue to assert we haven’t equitably provided support during this deeply distressing time, with various measures introduced for our Palestinian students and staff over the past year.
We have a rich history of activism on our campuses, and defend the right of our students and staff to express themselves freely, safely and in accordance with our policies and the law. Protests on campus organised by members of our community don’t require approval. Rather, we ask for 72-hours notice so that we can accommodate any temporary disruption. We do require approval to set up stalls so we understand that they are initiated by our staff or students, what activities are proposed, and that they meet our safety and compliance obligations. We will move people on that aren’t associated with the University as required.
Last week, our Protective Services team approached a group on campus hosting a stall and bake sale to ask if they had approval to do so. When it was confirmed they didn’t, and they declined to show identification when asked, they were asked to move their stall from the area. This decision had nothing to do with the cause they were supporting.
Nick Riemer is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney and academic Vice-President of the university’s National Tertiary Education Union branch. A long-time Palestine activist, he is the author of Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine.Available here. Views expressed here are his own and *not* those of the University