Macquarie must lift its standards when dealing with anti-Semitism

Macquarie University is investigating whether anti-Israel academic Randa Abdel-Fattah breached conditions of an $870,000 government research grant.

The Australian Research Council requires her to hold an academic conference as part of her project, but she is on the record saying that she did not.

If it turns out this constitutes significant misconduct under its employment agreement Macquarie should have a long and serious look at sacking her.

While this issue is about a legal agreement, Dr Abdel-Fattah’s expressed views indicate how anti-Semitism – often masquerading as opposition to Israel – is embedded in Australia’s universities. And antipathy to Australian political culture is its evil twin.

Macquarie University vice-chancellor S. Bruce Dowton acknowledges Dr Abdel-Fattah has made anti-Semitic statements. Her hope that 2025 would “be the end of Israel” and for the “abolishment of the death cult of Zionism” may be what he has in mind.

But Dr Abdel-Fattah’s national interest test statement for her current research grant demonstrates uninterest in Australia as a pluralist democracy rather than a nation of tribes. It states she will “investigate how Arab/Muslim Australian activists, working in anti-racism, anti-war and feminist social movements … have mobilised a range of diverse groups (such as Indigenous activists) to establish partnerships that impact local, national and global politics”.

She is free to research what she likes. But there is no reason taxpayers should fund it with two highly prized grants. There will be engineers and economists, mathematicians and meteorologists wondering how their nation-building, science-sustaining projects were passed over in her favour.

While there is no reason to believe the ARC did not properly use academic processes in making the grants, Dr Abdel-Fattah’s research interests and her expressed hatred of Israel appear to reflect the endemic assumption in universities in Europe and the Anglosphere that democracies created by immigrants are the cause of the world’s ills, and that as a “settler society” Israel should not exist.

As Cary Nelson writes in Inquirer, “long a fringe delusion, a spectacular falsehood became the consensus view for the academic left: Israel is the world’s core problem. This tiny Jewish state stands in the way of all oppressed people seeking to gain their freedom”.

That idea is widespread on campuses in Australia where unrepresentative activists have imposed their ideology since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in October 2023 and where some managements failed for months in 2024 to deal with occupations that sought to intimidate staff and students. It took until this week for the 39 public universities to finally agree to a uniform statement on anti-Semitism that they developed “for incorporation into relevant complaints and disciplinary processes”.

While they were working on that, Macquarie felt the need to create a password-protected safe space for Jewish students who felt threatened.

It is not good enough. Professor Dowton acknowledges Dr Abdel-Fattah has made anti-Semitic statements but he told a parliamentary committee inquiry in February “her employment relationship” was covered by the university staff agreement and that the lack of a legal definition of anti-Semitism would come up in any court case. This is undoubtedly true. Academics claiming unfair dismissal are regularly in the Fair Work Commission. But it is no reason for the university to give up.

Jewish students need a sanctuary on campus.

If Professor Dowton thinks disciplining anybody for acts that intimidate Jews or express anti-Semitism is too hard, he should take courage from the example of the University of Sydney, which sacked former academic Tim Anderson.

Dr Anderson superimposed a Nazi swastika on an Israeli flag for use in class and did not remove a photograph with a text stating “Death to Israel” and “Curse the Jews”. It took the university five years, but the Federal Court finally found that his conduct was not consistent with the university’s standards. It was time well spent.