The simple idea that could reshape life on campus for man

Jillian Segal, the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Universities will use bureaucracy to avoid most of Jillian Segal’s proposals to hold anti-Semites on campus to account. But she might be able to embarrass vice-chancellors into acting.

Ms Segal is the Albanese government’s Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism and in higher education her targets are “staff, students and visitors – who promote anti-Semitic rhetoric or harassment of Jewish students or academics”. And those of other faiths and values for that matter.

In all the furious denunciations of Ms Segal’s proposals her enemies overlook a crucial phrase in her call for cutting grants, “where the recipient engages in anti-Semitic or otherwise discriminatory or hateful speech or actions”.

Most of the ways she wants to do this have no hope of being adopted in whole by the higher education establishment and buckley’s of being backed by the government. But there is a way in her proposal to force university managements to take responsibility for protecting Jewish students and staff.

The ways that will not work are using university processes.

Thus she proposes working with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency against a “dangerous trajectory of normalised anti-Semitism” in courses and on campuses.

This will not happen in courses. For a start, universities have the power to accredit the content they teach. Certainly TEQSA has the power to take this away in whole or part.

But it would be a huge rebuff to a public university and if there was a confrontation over content the vice chancellor involved would all of a sudden come up with top-level solutions that would have no cultural impact at the chalkface.

As for academics teaching outright anti-Semitism, maybe cloaked in criticism of the Netanyahu government or critiques of “settler colonialism,” university managements already have the power to act – as long as they are up for a long fight on campus and in the courts.

Universities have policies that protect free speech rights for academics and employment conditions that make it hard to sack anybody. It took the University of Sydney years to be rid of lecturer Tim Anderson, who it accused of serious misconduct over a range of actions, including imposing a Nazi swastika on Israel’s flag in a lecture slide. The Federal Court found for Dr Anderson on the grounds that he was exercising his right to free speech under the university’s enterprise agreement. To its great credit, the university appealed, a full bench found his behaviour did not meet standards and he stayed sacked.

But this is a hard path for university managements to tread and the facts of this case will not cover all circumstances.

And then there are system features designed to insulate universities from critics. Education Minister Jason Clare demonstrated what will – more likely will not happen – to most of her recommendations last week. He told ABC TV he wanted to hear from the new Student Ombudsman, TEQSA, his Expert Council on University Governance and the Special Envoy on Combating Islamophobia. Plus the minister “wants to see the work” of the Race Discrimination Commissioner which he commissioned last year.

As peak body Universities Australia put it Friday, “It is not clear that additional mechanisms dealing only with anti-Semitism are helpful in this context.”

But Ms Segal has one proposal that could shame universities into never again failing to assist Jewish students and staff as occurred in last year’s Gaza protests, notably at the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney.

It is for the envoy to issue a report card on each university’s policies and practices against anti-Semitism and “consideration” of the experience of Jewish staff and students in “participating actively and equally in university life”.

The prospect of an annual statement on what happens on their campuses could clear vice chancellors minds wonderfully.

The University of Melbourne’s new vice chancellor appears to get this. Since taking over in February Emma Johnston has worked to ensure Jews, indeed everybody, will be free of intimidation and abuse on campus. She has tightened rules, introduced new policies and disciplined students.

“We recognise Jewish members of our community experience particular forms of prejudice or hate which constrain their freedom to live, work, study, worship, and identify as Jewish in Australian society,” she said the day after the Segal report.

It will take other vice chancellors who match her commitment to deliver on this. University advocates talk a big game about the essential freedom of their communities to study and teach and research without interference by the state. The problem is that academically unfashionable ideas, from critics of trans persons competing in women’s sport to the right of Israel as it is now is to exist, have long been attacked on campus. The previous government recognised the de-platforming problem and commissioned a model code of campus free speech by former chief justice of the High Court Robert French. Some universities took their time to sign on and it was not especially popular among academics who argued the code was not needed.

The way protesters did their best to silence and exclude Jews on campuses last year demonstrated that it was and still is.

If Ms Segal’s test eventuated it would put pressure on vice chancellors, the very people with the power to make universities live up to their ideals, to be places where ideas, not intimidation, rule. A pass mark would be essential.