Solidarity with Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah
Macquarie University Palestinian academic Randa Adbel-Fattah has been the victim of a vicious smear campaign conducted by the Murdoch press, the Labor Government and the Liberal Party. Under pressure from Labor Minister for Education Jason Clare, the Australian Research Council (ARC) has formally suspended Randa’s $870,000 Future Fellowship Grant.
Clare wrote to the ARC board on 31 January requesting they investigate her research grant as a “matter of priority”. Ironically, it was Clare himself who celebrated the Albanese government for revising the National Interest Test to supposedly stop politicians from interfering in research grants, saying in March 2024 that he “promised to end the days of ministers using the ARC as a political plaything”.
This stunning backflip shows that Labor is just as happy as the coalition to weaponize research funding for political purposes.
Abdel-Fattah’s grant, which began in 2023 and aimed to study the history of Arab/Muslim social justice activism in Australia, was targeted by the Australian newspaper after she participated in an anti-racist conference at the Queensland University of Technology, where she said
“The peak of an academic career ... usually means somebody who’s ... written lots of books about genocide but will not sign a statement against [it]. I want no part of that, so I look for ways to bend rules and refuse and subvert them. I challenge the formal circuits of knowledge production and what counts as knowledge.”
In response to this comment, Macquarie University must now prove that the grant has been administered appropriately, otherwise the grant, which also funds Abdel-Fattah’s salary, must be repaid in full.
When pressed by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi in a recent Senate estimates hearing, the ARC claimed that they are just doing their normal due diligence by investigating the grant. This same line was parroted by Macquarie vice-chancellor Bruce Downton in a staff town hall last week, where he, after casually mentioning staff redundancies several times, stated that the investigation does “not have anything to do with academic freedom or freedom of speech”. They must think we are stupid.
While Macquarie University has recently become the epicentre of academic repression, the suppression of Palestine supporters on campus is systematic. For example, the peak university lobbying organisation, Universities Australia, recently adopted a new definition of antisemitism which has been widely condemned, including by the Jewish Council of Australia.
Mohamed Duar of Amnesty International has said that
“This dangerous definition will be used to silence students and staff alike, suppress protest, and shut down criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the unlawful brutal and unlawful military occupation as well as apartheid that we determined to be a crime against humanity.”
The vilification of Abdel-Fattah and the targeting of her research grant is a part of this broader trend.
Labor has effectively found a bureaucratic means to sack an academic for their outspoken support of Palestine, something Liberal Shadow Minister for Education Sarah Henderson has been demanding for months. The ARC is doing the ALP’s dirty work and openly admitted in the Senate that their investigation stemmed from reporting by the Australian. This whole rotten affair shows that these liberal institutions that supposedly support freedom of inquiry and democratic values are a sham and cannot be counted on to defend our rights.
