‘Universities should never be places of fear’: Jennifer Westacott stands tall against anti-Semitism

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott has broken with fellow chancellors and explicitly condemned anti-Semitism during Gaza protests on Australian campuses.

University of Western Sydney chancellor Jennifer Westacott.

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott has broken with fellow chancellors and explicitly condemned anti-Semitism during Gaza protests on Australian campuses.

Ms Westacott, a former Business Council of Australia chief executive, writes in The Weekend Australian that it is time for ­“collective leadership” to call out “growing division and anti-Semitism”.

Her plea comes after weeks of pro-Palestinian campus protests during which students have chanted “intifada” and “From the river to the sea” anti-Israel slogans, accusations have been made that radical and anti-Semitic outsiders have infiltrated campuses, an anti-Israel terrorist-linked group’s flag has been flown, and Nazi-style gestures have been made at student meetings.

Going further than any university leader has since the anti-Israel campus protests began, Ms Westacott said universities were champions of free speech and places of intellectual challenge “but they must never be places of fear”.  “The hate speech and anti-Semitism occurring on our campuses is a direct assault on Australia’s multiculturalism and its principles,” she said.

Ms Westacott said she was speaking both as Western Sydney University chancellor – a role that makes her head of its governing body, similar to a company board chair – and in her personal ­capacity.

The university administrator and business leader says her own experiences suffering discrimination, and the way war and genocide have affected members of her family, fuelled her opposition to the anti-Semitism crisis in higher education.

“I’m doing so as part of a family that includes two people, a mother and her son, who are from an ­Islamic background, who are stateless because they faced genocide in Afghanistan, who were forced to flee, and now live as asylum-seekers,” she writes.

“They are our family, and my partner, Tess, and I love them. And I am doing so as someone who has endured sexism and ­homophobia. I do not believe we can pick and choose our moral positions.”

Ms Westacott’s condemnation of anti-Semitism comes after the University Chancellors Council decided at its plenary meeting last Thursday week not to explicitly call out anti-Semitic elements among campus protests, a resolution that went against the wishes of some chancellors. After the May 2, meeting the council issued a statement that condemned hate speech but stepped around the issue of anti-Semitism.

“Hate speech or conduct directed at any person or group of persons because of their nationality, religion or identity is completely unacceptable,” it said.

Another university chancellor told The Weekend Australian the council statement should have been stronger and explicitly condemned anti-Semitism, but this view was not ­accepted at the meeting.

In her article, Ms Westacott said the Australian values of tolerance, respect and fairness “made us the most successful multicultural country in the world”.

“I believe we cannot be silent when members of the Jewish community are targeted for the actions of a government more than 14,000 kilometres away,” she writes, saying Jews in ­Australia cannot be considered ­responsible for the Israeli government’s invasion of Gaza ­following the deadly Hamas ­attack on Israel on October 7 last year.

“It would be like persecuting the Russian diaspora for the ­actions of Vladimir Putin,” Ms Westacott writes.

“Nor can we allow any form of discrimination or intimidation against Palestinians because of the actions of Hamas.”