Weak, woke universities a lesson in hypocrisy

Pro-Palestine encampment protesters gather at the University of Sydney. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

Woke and weak universities are using free speech as a fig leaf to hide their impotence in dealing with dangerously divisive student protests on campus.

Vice-chancellors have made the mistake of letting radical activist groups take root at universities, through pop-up protest camps on campus. Having sown the seeds of identity politics, universities are now tasting the poisonous fruits of hate and division.

Outside activists are squatting on university grounds, hellbent on stirring up dissent and trouble by pulling the strings of pacifist students genuinely horrified by the atrocious war in Gaza. These outsiders are intimidating their critics and silencing students from sensible, constructive or nuanced debate.

At the University of Queensland, peace protesters have been rallying for months to cut research collaborations with Boeing, which builds planes as well as missile defence systems.

UQ Students for Palestine organiser Laura Nolan belled the cat on infiltrators at a protest that turned violent on Thursday. “A man who was masked and hiding his identity walked through our protest against the Boeing centre, and threw a bollard at a window of a nearby classroom and then left the area immediately,” she said.

“No one involved in Students for Palestine at UQ knows who this person is … This behaviour is not welcome at our events and anyone who wants to act like this will be told to leave immediately.”

In past weeks, student-led peace protests have morphed into anti-Semitic and destroy-Israel activism that would make Hamas proud. University sandstone has been plastered with the hateful anti-Jewish tropes of Nazi Germany and protesters flew a terrorist flag for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Chants of “intifada” – an Arab word for uprising, associated with terrorist attacks against Israel – and “From the river to the sea” – shorthand for wiping out Israel – are regularly hollered by student protesters too ignorant or too insensitive to draw the line at chanting terrorist slogans.

University protests in Australia are at flashpoint, and we need only to look to the campus chaos in the US to see how quickly they can turn into a violent anarchy.

Yet vice-chancellors on million-dollar salaries have failed to show the leadership or moral spine to stamp out hate speech that is making some students too scared to attend lectures.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental and precious human right that must be defended. But the flip side of free speech is responsibility. In a civilised society, people learn to express opposing views without threatening or intimidating those who think differently. Legal guardrails are the laws of defamation, racial vilification, discrimination and public safety.

University chiefs claim they can’t stop anyone chanting “intifada’’ on campus because the federal government needs to first rule on the definitive meaning of the slogan. Since when have academics needed governments to hold their hands before they can say something? They’re supposed to be our intellectual leaders.

It is hypocritical to claim they can’t intervene in the protests because they need to safeguard free speech. These are the same institutions that for decades have stomped on any language they fear might hurt someone’s sensibilities. UQ has published seven Orwellian guides to “inclusive language”, which must be “respectful and promote the acceptance and value of all people”.

A person living with a disability, for example, must not be referred to as a disabled person. “Avoid using ‘inspiration porn’ language – eg saying someone with a disability is an inspiration, or brave, or amazing for doing everyday things such as going to work,” it instructs staff and students. The university has marked down assignments that use “gendered language” such as “mankind”.

How is it that these universities won’t come out and tell pro-Palestinian protesters they can’t heckle Jewish students with intifada and river-to-the-sea slogans, and that Jewish students can’t taunt pro-Palestinians as “Nazis”? They would never tolerate anyone shouting about “niggers” or “pooftas”, so why do they tolerate hateful speech targeted at religion?

Some students feel uncomfortable or unsafe walking around campus because they are being sworn at, heckled or having leaflets pushed in their faces.

“It’s completely hypocritical,” says Jewish academic and Israeli expatriate Yoni Nazarathy, who lectures in artificial intelligence at UQ. “I’m a great believer in freedom of speech, also when I don’t agree with it. However, the narrative of the other encampment is harassment and not freedom of speech.” Chants of “intifada” are especially upsetting. “When I hear intifada being chanted, I feel fearful,” Nazarathy says, and he starts crying as he recounts his experience of terrorist bombings. “I actually know intifada first-hand.”

A Jewish student of law at Monash University says he finds the pro-Palestinian encampment there frightening. “There are many Jewish students who are scared of going on campus,” he says, speaking anonymously. “There are two groups, the Arab nationalists and the socialists. The socialists are mostly students and they aren’t threatening – nobody’s scared of a bunch of socialists. But when we have people from outside the uni come in, and we don’t know who they are, it’s scary.”

Activist groups that have hijacked the student protests include the Sit-Intifada protest movement, whose founder, Ihab al-Azhari, was filmed outside the Victorian parliament on Monday shouting “7 October is just the bloody beginning of it”. He visited the pro-Palestinian protest camp at Monash University on Monday and was photographed with pro-Palestine activist Mohammad Sharab, who is on bail for alleged kidnap and assault. Other ringleaders include the Revolutionary Communist Organisation, which describes itself as “a fighting group who seek to organise for the formation of a Communist party that can arm the working class for the final confrontation with Capital”.

Pro-Palestine activist Mohammad Sharab.

Socialist Alternative, which has set up stalls on campuses across the country, advocates that “capitalism must be overthrown by the working class and replaced with a worldwide socialist system”.

Curiously, these “Trotskys” do not appear to be protesting against Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine or the human rights abuses in communist China.

What next? Will universities also let religious sects set up a stand in their courtyards to proselytise to students? How about a stand for neo-Nazis to peddle propaganda to passing pedestrians?

What is most puzzling is how protesters were allowed to pitch tents on university land. Heartlessly, homeless people who set up tents in Brisbane’s parks are having them confiscated, even though they have nowhere else to live. But UQ has permitted protesters to set up “encampments” on either side of its Great Court.

“It’s like trench warfare,” says UQ emeritus professor Tor Hundloe, an 81-year-old warhorse of the environmental protest movement who took part in demonstrations against Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the 1970s. He is dismayed by the nature of today’s protests, likening the outside activists to “toolies” who try to gatecrash student parties at the annual “schoolie” celebrations on the Gold Coast. He has written to UQ vice-chancellor Deborah Terry and chancellor Peter Varghese demanding intervention.

“Rather than allowing on campus two separate tent cities – existing as wartime trenches with no rational dialogue between the occupants of each trench – our university could play a small positive role in improving the knowledge of both groups by facilitating a series of debates on the Israel-Palestine situation,” he wrote this week.

“In truth, these are not student protests, rather non-university people bringing their conflict on to our ground and taking advantage of our dedication to free speech. We should tell the outsiders that they are not welcome given their behaviour.”

At the University of Sydney, vice-chancellor Mark Scott told The Daily Telegraph he did not think the intifada chant met the threshold of hate speech. “I can understand that it is uncomfortable for some of our Jewish staff and students to have the encampment there,” he said. “I’m very sympathetic to that view. That is, though, how our university and (other) places committed to free speech will operate. People will be upset from time to time by things that they hear, by things that they see, by the presence of people who hold strongly divergent views from them, but as a university we need to be able to manage that diversity of views.”

It is ironic that this elite university also has a hit list of banned words – such as mankind and man-made – and has decreed that “when someone is referred to by the wrong pronoun, it is disrespectful and harmful”.

At Monash University, police and security guards stood in silence as Jewish students, trying to walk through the pro-Palestinian encampment on Wednesday, were sworn at repeatedly by hardline activists from outside the university. Most pubs would evict patrons for such boorish behaviour.

La Trobe University condones protesters disrupting lectures and classes. “If protesters enter our classes, we would ask that you refrain from intervening and allow them to share the information they wish to,” provost Rob Pike wrote to staff. “If they stay for longer than five minutes, we request that you notify security. If your class is significantly disrupted, or you and your students do not feel comfortable continuing the session, you have the option to cancel the class and reschedule. Please also remind your students that they can access wellbeing support.”

Students are paying customers of universities and take out large loans to learn on campus. They have a right to do so without being interrupted or harangued. Perhaps they’ll start demanding refunds