Star Chamber’s shameless act

University of Queensland student activist Drew Pavlou, 20, is no shrinking violet. He has the substance, resilience and front, we hope, to bounce back from the penalty imposed on him by an institution that has abandoned all pretence of supporting free speech and civil liberties. The young man will need them. A two-year ban in the final year of his degree in philosophy, history and English literature, for which he has won several academic awards, would be a severe blow to any student at that stage.

The punishment, imposed late on Friday by a faceless disciplinary panel behind closed doors, says little about Mr Pavlou. But it says a great deal about the depths to which a powerful section of the once-great Group of Eight institution has sunk. Disgusted alumni can only wonder what distinguished vice-chancellors of the past, such as constitutional lawyer and former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowen and literature scholar John Hay, who built the university’s strength in scientific research, would think.

Even the university is embarrassed. An hour or so after the verdict chancellor Peter Varghese, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, stepped in to the role of “video umpire”. Mr Varghese said he was personally concerned about “aspects of the finding and the severity of the penalty”. In consultation with vice-chancellor Peter Hoj, who played no role in the disciplinary process, Mr Varghese said, the chancellor has convened an extraordinary meeting of the UQ senate next week to discuss the matter.

It will be interesting to see whether Mr Pavlou, who was voted on to the senate by his fellow students, attends the meeting or is allowed in. Mr Pavlou was elected to the senate on a platform opposing the Confucius Institute and Chinese Communist Party influence at UQ. His suspension, conveniently for the institution, allows him to re-enrol at UQ in 2022, a semester after his position on the senate would expire.

On Friday, in a style reminiscent of the CCP, the disciplinary panel gave no reason for its decision. Its silence, for now, leaves Mr Pavlou’s claim that the university acted to protect its business interests with the CCP unchallenged. As Michael McKenna reports, Mr Pavlou faced 11 allegations of misconduct following his protests and social media posts about UQ’s academic ties with Chinese ­government institutions and his criticisms of the CCP’s human rights record. In a principled stand, prominent QC Tony Morris is representing him pro bono.

In July last year, Mr Pavlou organised an on-campus protest in support of Hong Kong’s independence movement. Hundreds of students gathered in the university’s Great Court to express their solidarity with Hong Kong when pro-Chinese students gatecrashed the demonstration.

Henry Ergas, who tutored in economics at UQ in the early 1970s, made a pertinent point on Friday when he wrote that in pursuing Mr Pavlou, the university had accomplished what Joh Bjelke-Petersen never could 50 years ago. The former premier, no friend of free speech, wanted UQ to expel the ringleaders of student protests. The university did not buckle then. Friday’s decision makes it harder, but not impossible, for the university to reclaim the moral high ground. Rarely have student protests been directed at a more important cause.