How ANU students sacked Genevieve Bell
Genevieve Bell has resigned as vice-chancellor of the Australian National University. The ex-Intel executive, who we now know wasn’t as “ex” as advertised, quietly remaining on Intel’s payroll while raking in a hefty $1.1 million salary, has been hailed in the New York Times as an “oracle with magical predictive powers”.
But Bell didn’t predict the months-long revolt of students and staff that made her position untenable. She leaves behind a legacy of cuts and arrogance that ignited one of the biggest campus campaigns in ANU’s history.
Under Bell’s “Renew ANU” restructure, courses were gutted, staff were sacked, and students’ education was trashed. At the School of Music, one-on-one lessons and performance subjects, the very core of the program, were axed. Across the university, workloads were piled higher, departments stripped back and core subjects binned.
The justification? An alleged $250 million operating deficit. But ANU’s own 2025 financial report recorded a healthy surplus. In other words, it was a political choice: sacrifice staff jobs and student education for “financial sustainability”.
Students and staff refused to accept it. In July, 500 rallied outside the Chancellery demanding Bell and Chancellor Julie Bishop be sacked, and the cuts reversed. Music students staged an extraordinary 24-hour protest performance. Staff held a historic no-confidence vote, with overwhelming majorities declaring they had no faith in Bell or Bishop’s leadership.
At the centre of the fight has been No Cuts at ANU, a student campaign led by members of Socialist Alternative. From the start, No Cuts argued that management is not on our side, that compromise is a dead end and that only mass protest could win.
This combative approach starkly contrasted with the ANU Student Association (ANUSA). Rather than calling for Bell’s head, ANUSA insisted that we treat her as a “worker” and explore “constructive” ways to manage the cuts. In practice, this meant bowing to management and refusing to harness student anger. This is precisely the approach that has let decades of attacks on universities go unchallenged.
The Bell saga illuminates the transformation of universities. For decades, governments have slashed public funding, forcing universities to operate as corporate machines. Students are customers, workers are exploited, and executives are recruited straight from the boardrooms of business and politics, hence Bell and Bishop.
These executives don’t share a common interest with us. They exist to make the university profitable, no matter what the cost to education. That’s why Bell could spend more than $1 million cracking down on Palestine solidarity activism while crying poor and sacking staff.
The lesson is clear. We cannot appeal to the moral virtue of executives like Bell. Petitioning or pleading with them to “listen” is futile. Trying to meet them on “their level” with arguments about profitability and the university’s prestige only capitulates to their managerial logic.
Some in ANUSA even argued that calling for Bell’s sacking might provoke the university to defund the student union. But if management tried that, it would only have opened a bigger fight—one we could have won with protests and the continued involvement of staff. The worst mistake would have been to preemptively surrender.
Bell’s resignation is a victory for everyone who rallied, protested and refused to back down. But the cuts remain. The fight now is to stop Renew ANU in its tracks, reverse the existing course cuts, and drive Julie Bishop out alongside Bell.
ANU students have shown the way: mass, uncompromising action works. If we keep building, if we refuse to compromise, we can win. And our struggle can inspire students elsewhere to take on the corporate executives who are gutting higher education.
