University chiefs, minister fail to nail anti-Semitism
University chancellors and vice-chancellors, regrettably, are failing to give name to the scourge of anti-Semitism rearing its ugly, dangerous head on campuses around the nation. Their leadership failures are shameful. Likewise the reticence of the normally articulate Education Minister, Jason Clare, who has trotted out the government’s hackneyed line that “there is no place in our country for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or racism of any kind”.
He and university authorities have done little, so far, to ensure that is the case, despite protests so vehement they prompted the lockdown of two University of Queensland buildings on Wednesday, after a 100-strong group descended on the JD Story Administration Building and Brian Wilson Chancellery. They entered the offices of vice-chancellor Deborah Terry, demanding she front the crowd to discuss the university’s ties to Boeing and space aeronautics company Northrop Grumman, which the protesters claim are tied to Israeli military action in Gaza. On the same day, the university told demonstrators to take down the flag of an internationally recognised terrorist outfit, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Its presence was indicative of protest organisers’ real loyalties.
On Thursday, the University Chancellors Council released a vapid, six-line statement and did not face the media. Apart from noting they were responding to a letter from the Australian Academic Alliance Against anti-Semitism, the chancellors did not even mention anti-Semitism that is rampant on campuses they lead. They have not given the clarity of leadership to call out what is happening in their midst. “Hate speech or conduct directed at any person or group of persons because of their nationality, religion or identity is completely unacceptable,” the chancellors said. But Jewish Australian students, understandably, do not feel safe as hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric is hurled, including at Monash University, named in honour of our greatest Jewish Australian.
Thursday’s University of Melbourne protests summed up the situation. Early on, UniMelb for Palestine said “pro-Israel protesters have a right to gather according to the university’s freedom of speech policy’’. But its statement was deeply offensive to Jewish students, insisting “we disagree with the idea that a protest in support of a genocidal regime should be treated as if it is somehow comparable to our peaceful demonstration for freedom, justice and equality”. Draped in Israeli and Australian flags, pro-Israel supporters, including grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, made their aim clear, for campuses to be safe for Jewish students. Anti-Semitism had been on the rise since October 7, Zionist Federation of Australia CEO Alon Cassuto told the crowd. “We know that students don’t feel safe to be who they are and celebrate who they are.’’ And posters proclaimed: “Keep hate off campus.’’ It is not too much to ask. Not unreasonably, the students want to talk with Mr Clare and university authorities.
The contrasting outlooks between the opposing groups were clear when at one stage they faced each other across a small pond. The pro-Israel group called for opponents to take off their masks; some of the pro-Palestinian group chanted “from the river to the sea’’ – shorthand for the destruction of Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, which is the driving goal of Hamas and Iran. It begs the questions: What efforts are universities making, in supposed centres of enlightenment, to explain the injustice and risks that would be inherent in Israel’s destruction? Or the history of “genocidal regimes’’? Or why Bob Hawke said that if the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all mankind? Academic leaders do not seem interested in the lessons of anti-Semitism in Europe in the early 1930s, and its consequences. Scholarship, surely, demands such issues be tackled. The Australian Academic Alliance Against anti-Semitism is right to warn anti-Israel protests are “spiralling out of control” as universities do not strike a balance between free speech and safety. Chancellors and vice-chancellors must unambiguously condemn and act to stamp out campus anti-Semitism.
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