Vice-chancellors, chancellors blind to seriousness of campus anti-Semitism

Australia’s anti-Semitism envoy says the ‘nub of the problem’ is most university vice-chancellors think they’re doing enough to combat anti-Semitism.

Jillian Segal says vice-chancellors believe they are doing enough to combat anti-Semitism and don’t realise how bad it is. Picture: Nadir Kinani

Most university vice-chancellors believe they are doing enough to combat anti-Semitism and possess a “degree of self-denial”, which Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism described as the “nub of the problem” for why the crisis of Jewish hatred on campus is not being appropriately addressed.

Jillian Segal AO said like with the banking royal commission, “those at the top, the leadership, do not really know what’s going on the ground”.

She told the public hearing for a Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill that some vice-chancellors she had spoken to were “very concerned”, but in most cases, “vice-chancellors or the chancellors … that I’ve spoken to believe that what they are doing is appropriate”.

“And that I believe is the nub of the problem, because, as I said earlier, I think that there is a degree of self-denial as to how bad the situation is on their campuses and it’s a recognition that there is a problem, but they don’t understand how bad the problem is and how much needs to change,” she said.

Ms Segal described common examples of “pointed anti-Semitism” her office had come across in their discussions with 65 Jewish students, academics and staff members.

“The lecturer to others, taunted them, you know, (saying) ‘you are Jewish. Surely, you should defend Israel. That kind of singling out of people just because of their identity of being Jewish, even though it might have had nothing to do with the argument, or the issue that was being discussed in the seminar,” she said. “That is, you know, focused, pointed anti-Semitism making an individual student feel harassed, uncomfortable, alone, and then suggesting – when they complain that they were being dealt with in this way – that they study from home.”

She said many students she had spoken to were “suffering from emotional trauma” and she had referred a few to counselling services.

“There’s an underappreciation of the seriousness, which the anti-Semitism that they’ve been subjected to and the way that it’s been dealt with has affected them and their mental wellbeing and many of them are in the hands of medical staff. So I do think a ­judicial inquiry would give them that confidence of absolute confidentiality.”

Ms Segal said there had been a realisation overseas, but not in Australia, “that balancing freedom of speech and racial hatred has become skewed in favour of racial hatred” and said that outside influences like Hizb ut-Tahrir should not be tolerated as part of freedom of speech.