Jewish-American students say Australian universities must take action on anti-Semitism

Jewish leaders from two top US universities have issued a stern warning to Australia’s tertiary institutions following a student general meeting at Sydney University.

Michigan Institute of Technology student Talia Khan at Melbourne University. Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

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American student leaders who feature in a film documenting the explosion of hatred on college campuses in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks have issued a warning to Australian universities confronted with rising anti-Semitism.

Talia Khan, a doctoral student at the Michigan Institute of Technology who appears in the documentary titled October 8, said universities were “failing their students” by not fostering “complex discussions or nuanced conversation about the conflict or Israeli policies”.

Her comments followed a general meeting held on Wednesday evening in which Sydney University’s student representative council endorsed a single Palestinian state from “the river to the sea” and rejected the institution’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Many students at the meeting turned their backs on Jewish students as they put forward their views.

While Wednesday’s student gathering was only the sixth SGM in the university’s 175-year history, it was the second meeting in the past 10 months held by the student representative body calling for the elimination of Israel.

Ms Khan labelled calls for a one-state solution as “completely ignorant”.

“Personally I’m a free speech absolutist ... I think it’s really important in a healthy democracy to be free to say even really disgusting things,” she said.

“Blocking people from saying things is undemocratic but obviously it’s not intellectually rigorous or accurate comparing Israel to a Nazi state.

“That's what we should be focusing on, that universities are failing their students because they have an inability to engage in complex discussions or nuanced conversation about the conflict or Israeli policies.”

Fellow university student and president of the University of California’s student body, Tessa Veksler, who also appears in the film, said there was “no other word” to describe the events of Wednesdays SGM than “anti-Semitism”.

“When two Jews come to discuss a topic that’s personal to them and people turn their backs on them, there’s no other word to describe that,” she said.

“What I’m seeing here in Australia is that university administrations will see the most blatant, obvious anti-Semitism and they will choose not to act upon it.” The UC student leader lashed Australian universities for creating separate spaces for Jewish students instead of “making sure anti-Semitic students are held accountable for their behaviour”.

Motions passed at the SRC-held student general meeting on Wednesday night rejected a new definition of anti-Semitism adopted by Australia’s universities and called for the elimination of the Jewish state.

The motions moved by anti-Israel activist group Students Against War, which passed almost unanimously, declared that it was “not anti-Semitic to call for the elimination of the apartheid state of Israel”.

These statements fly in the face of the newly adopted university definition of anti-Semitism which states: “Criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the state of Israel.”

Dor Foundation chief executive Tahli Blicblau said that while Australian universities were on the right track there “was more work to do”. “The definitions are the beginning, it’s really about how you apply them,” she said.

“It can only take you so far when we’re talking about real cultural change, there is really a lot more work to do in understanding what is driving this.”

A university spokeswoman said it was aware of the student meeting and had “liaised with key members of relevant student groups and ­reminded them of their obligations to manage their meetings in a way that is respectful of the opinion of others”.

October 8 highlights the explosion of anti-Semitism in the aftermath of Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023, particularly on US college campuses and social media.