La Trobe staff and students speak out against university censorship
“When bombs fall on Gaza it’s not just Netanyahu who is responsible. It’s also the companies who make the drones, the governments who fund them and the universities that silence dissent”: this was how Palestinian activist and La Trobe alumni Hajar Riad opened a pro-Palestine meeting on 20 August at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.
The event was organised as a counter-panel to the Bendigo Writers Festival, which was supposed to take place the previous week at La Trobe’s Bendigo campus but which was effectively cancelled after more than 30 speakers pulled out citing concern over a code of conduct that prohibited discussion of the genocide in Gaza.
The Bendigo Writers Festival was promoted as an event that “brings together diverse voices… sparking ideas, conversation and inspiration.” Instead, it’s highlighted the draconian attack on free speech by universities looking to stifle activism against and opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
Two days before the festival, writers and presenters in the “La Trobe Presents” sessions were sent a code of conduct that required them to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful”. They were also told they had to abide by La Trobe University’s “Anti-Racism Action Plan”, which defines criticism of Israel as antisemitism. The plan states that “All peoples, including Jews, have the right to self-determination. For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity.”
The plan was implemented in May 2025 as a response to the 2024 Gaza solidarity encampment and the mass Student General Meeting for Palestine, where more than 250 students voted for La Trobe to cut ties with companies involved with the genocide. The purpose of the plan is to make it harder for students and staff to criticise Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and the university’s complicity in it.
Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian author and academic at Macquarie University, wrote in her withdrawal letter, “at a time when journalists are being permanently silenced by Israel’s genocidal forces, it is incomprehensible that a writers festival should seek to silence Palestinian voices”. More than 240 journalists have been killed by Israeli military forces since October 2023. This makes Israel’s war the deadliest for journalists in modern history. While those seeking to get the truth out about what’s happening in Palestine are being killed, those trying to talk about it in the West are being silenced, by institutions that supposedly stand for “free thought” no less.
The counter-panel was a demonstration of opposition to university management and a show of solidarity with those standing up against oppression and injustice. It attracted more than 30 students and staff and involved them in discussion about how to best opposed genocide as well as censorship in our work and studies.
La Trobe Student Union Education Officer Maeve Russack was the final speaker on the panel. She argued, “I think that there’s a key lesson to be learnt from the Bendigo Writers Festival and it’s that the university and their policy book are not an omnipotent being, but are something that can be resisted and something our side must continue to resist”.
