New University of Queensland V-C Deborah Terry back home and into storm

New University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry says she is ‘absolutely committed to freedom of speech’.

Deborah Terry returns to the University of Queensland as vice-chancellor, after six years heading Curtin University. Picture: Glenn Hunt

New University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry says she is “absolutely committed to freedom of speech’’ on the campus that has banned anti-China-influence student activist Drew Pavlou.

Professor Terry, speaking after a Queensland Futures Institute event in Brisbane on Thursday, said she was “becoming fam­il­iar” with the Pavlou case that attracted international criticism of her predecessor, Peter Hoj.

“The focus … is to ensure that the university’s reputation is strong,” Professor Terry told The Australian. “The university is absolutely­ committed to freedom of speech — these are critical issues­, and we will remain abso­lutely committed to the future.”

Professor Terry said she would not comment on the details of the Pavlou case, as she had only started at UQ this week.

Mr Pavlou, a student-elected member of the UQ senate, was suspended for the current semester­ after he was found guilty of two of 11 misconduct allegations contained in a 186-page confidential dossier into his campus­ and online activities.

The two “serious misconduct” allegations involved a satirical stunt in which he posed outside Professor Hoj’s office wearing a hazmat suit and online abuse of a fellow student. He had initially been suspended for two years. An appeal also overturned findings of guilt on a number of other charges, amid criticism by chancellor Peter Varghese about the severity of the initial punishment.

The misconduct investigation followed Mr Pavlou’s vocal crit­ici­sm of Chinese influence at the university and his organisation of a protest in support of Hong Kong at the St Lucia campus last year, which turned violent.

Professor Terry served six years as vice-chancellor of Western Australia’s Curtin University. She had worked at UQ before for 24 years. Professor Hoj retired from the position last Friday after almost eight years in the role.

Drew Pavlou. Picture: Liam Kidston

Mr Pavlou questioned Profes­sor Terry’s commitment to free speech after UQ administrators told him this week he was not allowed to go on campus. “She is fobbing it off,” he said. “There is absolutely no way she would not have been briefed on it as soon as she came in. It is clearly one of the university’s top priorities at the moment, given it’s completely overshadowing basically all other media coverage of the university.

“If the university is absolutely committed to free speech, then why on her first day was I kicked off the UQ senate and why was I placed on a total ban on campus, such that I would be arrested?’’

The activist, who in July last year organised a series of protests supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement and highlighted the university’s links to China, was sent a series of emails from UQ on Monday outlining the conditions of his suspension

Mr Varghese issued a statement that day saying Mr Pavlou could no longer sit on the Senate, but that was not because of his “personal or political views about China or Hong Kong’’.