Jennifer Westacott’s deeply personal fight against anti-Semitic hate

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott has revealed her childhood trauma under an anti-Semitic father while slamming universities for failing Jewish students.

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott. Picture: John Feder

Jennifer Westacott has for the first time detailed her upbringing under “severe violence” and anti-Semitism as she excoriated other tertiary institutions for failing Jewish students.

The Western Sydney University chancellor gave an address to the Australian Jewish Funders and the Dor Foundation – former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s charity combating anti-Semitism – in which she spoke of her “belated understanding and insight into the deep-seated nature of anti-Semitism and the scale and horror of the Holocaust” after a childhood rocked by the bigotry of her father.

“My father was many things, but most profoundly, an anti-Semite,” she said. “My early life … was characterised by disadvantage, by moments of family dysfunction and by sporadic but often severe violence.

“So as a young person I had a lingering sense of anxiety and fear.

“I remember seeing an image when my parents were watching TV. This showed two people in striped prison clothing, hanging by their necks in a street somewhere.

“I have never been able to shake off the image of their faces.

“I must have been very distressed because my father said something to me like ‘Don’t worry, that only happens to the Jews’.

“All my life I have questioned my own morality of not challenging his views. But I was a child. My fear and my own lack of understanding meant even as I got older, I was afraid to or incapable of saying anything.

“Tragically, it is now evident to me that his views were and still are, in some sections of our society, commonplace.”

The eminent business and education leader said Australia faced a “failure of collective leadership” after October 7, 2023 – namely among its universities.

“Universities are places where there is a contest of ideas but they can never be places of fear and ­intimidation,” she said.

“I watched institutions hiding behind free speech to avoid taking action against anti-Semitism.

“What unfolded in Australia was a failure of collective leadership.

“We failed to urgently align and drive a whole-of-nation rejection of anti-Semitic actions, to act with moral clarity about what was clearly abhorrent, and through incremental acquiescence, either deliberately or through indifference, we legitimised a set of actions and behaviours that are an affront to our way of life.”

Using her position on the board of the Dor Foundation, Ms Westacott said she would push for tertiary sector reforms and puzzle out the flare-up in anti-Semitic tensions on campuses in the past two years.

“I still don’t believe we fully comprehend why universities became the catalyst for hate and anti-Semitism. Our task is to understand this, understand its origins, understand how widespread it is, understand what actions will turn it around,” she said.

“Working in partnership with universities, we will support a ­process of permanent and continuous reflection and action to eliminate anti-Semitism from university environments.

“We will be working with ­others on campuses with a focus on empowering students and ­academics to address anti-Semitism and hate speech when they see it.”