Sydney’s Mark Scott flunks the big test of uni leadership

It’s a tale of two universities and some others as well. Compare and contrast the University of Sydney (vice-chancellor Mark Scott) and Western Sydney University (chancellor Jennifer Westacott).

Last Friday, Mark Scott gave evidence to the Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism at Australian Universities. Picture: NewsWire/Max Mason-Hubers

It’s a tale of two universities and some others as well. Compare and contrast the University of Sydney (vice-chancellor Mark Scott) and Western Sydney University (chancellor Jennifer Westacott).

Both are well-known Australians who have engaged in the public debate for years – Scott as a former managing director and editor-in-chief of the ABC, Westacott as a former executive director of the Business Council of Australia.

Anti-Semitism was ripe at many Western universities before October 7 last year when the Hamas terrorist group invaded southern Israel and engaged in murder, rape and kidnap primarily against civilians – men and women (including the elderly), children and even infants. In Australia and elsewhere there were immediate anti-Israel demonstrations.

An early anti-Israel demonstration included a group led by Sydney University academic Nick Riemer. In October last year, Riem­er stated: “We’re staff from Sydney University … that support boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel. He made no reference to Hamas’s war crimes of October 7 – as if they were of scant interest. By the way, Riemer teaches English literature.

There was an opportunity then for the powers that be at Sydney University to tell those on its payroll (to which taxpayers make a substantial contribution) that they had neither the authority nor the right to speak in the university’s name. But on the available evidence, Scott was silent and failed to exhibit authority.

Last Friday, Scott gave evidence to the Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism at Australian Universities. In response to questions from Coalition senators Sarah Henderson and Paul Scarr, Scott said with respect to Sydney University Jewish academics and students: “Yes, I have failed them and the university has failed them.”

This came almost a year after campus anti-Israel demonstrations began that included an eight-week encampment. Some of the protesters were students and academics. Some were inner-city left-wing radicals. And some were members of Muslim extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation.

Scott was able to see the end of the encampment by agreeing that the university’s Muslim Students Association would be consulted concerning university involvement with defence and security-related research. This was an abject surrender to individuals involved in the illegal encampment – who got to belong to a working group.

Scott told the inquiry he regretted “we did not communicate the agreement to end the encamp­ment with the Jewish community before it was announced”. This is being wise after the event. In a video call to donors on July 4, Scott boasted “the greatest gift” he “could give to our Jewish students and staff was for the encampment to be gone”. It took him three months to wake up to the realities of his surrender to the demonstrations.

I have known Scott for a few decades. He is an intelligent and nice person but profoundly weak. He understood the left-wing culture when he was ABC managing director but took the easy way out by declining to reform the public broadcaster. He then went into denial with respect to the ABC’s critics, most of whom wanted to improve the organisation.

Now look back to Western Sydney University. The institution has campuses in Sydney’s west. Sure, it has no inner-city, green-left types. But it has a large Muslim population – Sunni and Shia – among a big multicultural intake.

On May 10, Westacott wrote an article in The Australian, “This is our line in the sand: act now to end hate speech”. She wrote in her “personal capacity and as the chancellor of one of the country’s leading universities … which is home to people from 170 countries and where one in two people speaks a language other than English at home”. Her message was direct. Western Sydney University “requires that freedoms and rights be exercised with zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, hate speech or intimidation”.

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott. Picture: NewsWire/Monique Harmer

Not surprisingly, Western Sydney did not experience anti-Semitic encampments such as those at Sydney University.

In Quadrant Online on September 24, former Age journalist Tony Thomas documented submissions to the inquiry under the heading “Hating and Hounding Jews on Campus”. Thomas covers disturbing instances of anti-Semitism and weak administration at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne, but the worst examples come from Sydney University. As he puts it: “Sydney University is … anti-Semitism’s epicentre”.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus addressed the Sydney Institute on September 5. He responded to a question from a woman who described herself as “a Jew and a Labor supporter” and said she felt “uncomfortable in her own city”.

Dreyfus said every part of Australian society should do more “to fight against anti-Semitism”. He added this was a responsibility of universities “who have not done enough” concerning the “appalling and shocking rise in anti-Semitism over the last 10 months”.

Later on, he said it was “apparent not all of the universities have enforced the codes of conduct that are there to regulate the conduct of students”. Dreyfus did not name names. But clearly he had Scott’s Sydney University, but not Westacott’s Western Sydney University, in mind.