Please explain: Coalition wants answers on ANU ‘expulsion’

The opposition has demanded the ANU explain how Hamas-supporting student Beatrice Tucker had her expulsion overturned and is now running for president of the student association.

ANU student Beatrice Tucker. Picture: Facebook

Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson has demanded the Australian National University explain how Hamas-supporting student Beatrice Tucker had her expulsion overturned and is now running for president of the student association.

In a letter to vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell, Senator Henderson said given Tucker had been identified in Senate hearings, “there is no basis to refuse to provide information about the revocation on privacy grounds”.

She said the ANU’s decision to reverse Tucker’s expulsion “directly threatens the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students”.

“ANU’s decision suggests it is acceptable for any ANU student to openly endorse this terrorist organisation which is abhorrent,” the letter reads.

Tucker this year caused controversy when saying on radio that Hamas deserved “unconditional support”.

She was subsequently expelled from the university. That was recently overturned and she is now a candidate for president in ANU student association elections under a ticket named “Globalise the Resistance for Palestine”.

“I won’t comment on individual disciplinary cases,” Professor Bell said when questioned on Friday by a Senate committee.

“There is an appeals process. When that appeals process is triggered, we constitute an appeals committee.

“They investigate and form an opinion about the decision that was made. That decision is then final for the university.”

When pressed on Tucker’s candidacy for the ANU student association, Professor Bell said the organisation was independent from the university.

“I can’t imagine a world in which we think it would be a good idea for vice-chancellors to determine who should run our student associations,” she said.

In May this year, Tucker told ABC radio that “Hamas deserves our unconditional support … Not because I agree with the strategy, complete disagreement with that, but the situation at hand is if you have no hope, if you are sanctioned every day of your life, if you are told you are not allowed to drive down a road because somebody who is Israeli gets preference and you sit there for 12 hours, the reality of lives …”

“But Beatrice, that can’t justify what they did in October last year,” the host interjected.

“Nothing can justify what has been happening to the Palestinian people for 75 years,” Tucker responded.

“And essentially the UN coming in with the situation of a two-state solution … You know the history of that place, of Palestine, the Palestinians before the UN came in with the two-state solution actually were also under an English mandate, right? Palestinians were promised that they would have self-determination.

“I will not condemn what Hamas did.”