Universities are repressing Palestine solidarity activism
If you walked past Mark McGowan, former premier of Western Australia, and gave him a serve for his role in locking up Indigenous children, you would probably feel pretty good about yourself. If it was filmed and put online, you might even end up in a segment on the Project. If you happened to do it at Curtin University in Western Australia, you’d probably be suspended. This is what happened to a student at Curtin last month, one of many students across the country facing discipline over justified acts of protest.
Red Flag has covered the increased repression on campuses in the wake of the Gaza solidarity encampments. In response to the Palestine solidarity movement, universities changed their policies and student charters to make it even harder to speak out against the genocide in Gaza. We are now seeing the impact of these changes, as well as the political impact of the parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism on campuses. The historic student general meetings (SGM), in which thousands of students nationwide have voted in solidarity with Palestine, have also kicked off a new wave of repression.
There are dozens of examples of universities repressing pro-Palestine activism in just the last few months. Here are a few of them. The Students for Palestine club at the University of New South Wales has been suspended in the wake of the SGM. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has launched disciplinary proceedings against three students for their participation in a political meeting at that campus. The University of Sydney shut down a bake sale raising funds for Gazans and has brought misconduct charges against students for organising a Palestine solidarity protest on campus, including an anti-Zionist Jewish student. Melbourne University is hunting down students who occupied the office of a pro-Israel lecturer. The vice-chancellor interfered in the student union elections at the University of Technology Sydney to ban mention of the word “genocide”. And at the Australian National University, the spending of elected student union officers is being audited because they promoted Palestine solidarity. Not only students: two academics at the University of Sydney are being accused of racial vilification over their support for Palestine.
Up and down the country, space for student activism—almost a rite of passage for young people—is narrowing, and those who dare to speak out against the genocide in Gaza are being dragged through misconduct hearings. It’s difficult to grasp the full scale of this, as many universities impose confidentiality clauses that prevent students from speaking publicly about their repression.
The political backdrop for these attacks is a hysterical campaign by the mainstream media, the Labor government, the Liberals and Zionist organisations against Palestine solidarity activism. This resulted, among other things, in a Senate committee about a supposed wave of antisemitism on campuses. Many of the submissions to the committee made the well-rehearsed argument that any criticism of Israel amounts to a racist attack on Jewish people. The purpose here is to accuse pro-Palestine activists of being antisemites who must be stopped.
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott in particular was accused of not doing enough to suppress this supposed problem. Submissions and commentators, including opposition leader Peter Dutton, attacked him for not instantly shutting down the Gaza solidarity encampment on his campus. Jillian Segal, the recently appointed special envoy to combat antisemitism, wrote a submission to the Senate hearing which stated that there is a “pervasive hatred” of Jewish people at the University of Sydney, and that antisemitism is an “embedded” part of university culture. Her accusation is based on a few interviews with Jewish staff and students, all of whom support Israel and are opposed to the anti-war movement. In the months after the campaign against Scott began, the university launched a witch-hunt against known Palestine solidarity activists.
In the initial months of Israel’s war on Gaza, there was a more liberal approach on the campuses. Even when the solidarity encampments were established, most universities chose not to shut them down or bring in the cops, as we saw in the United States. Scott even said he wouldn’t ban political expression and respected the right of students to protest. But a hardline approach has since been adopted by the administrations, who have fallen into line with the anti-Palestine campaign.
Universities are some of the country’s largest institutions that help to manufacture the ideological material of Australian society, as well as the literal material of weapons research in partnership with weapons companies and other imperialist nations like the United States and Israel. This is all far more important to administrations than academic freedom and open political expression. Those who run the universities form part of Australia’s elite: they come from it, and they contribute to it. For instance, RMIT vice-chancellor Alec Cameron is a long-term member of the ultra-conservative, boys-only, Australian Club. Sydney University’s chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson, sits on the board of Thales Australia, a major weapons manufacturer. Many vice-chancellors earn more than a million dollars a year.
So when a hegemonic political line is established by the Australian elite, university management will toe it. There is a common view of universities as oases of open expression, where ideas flow freely, common sense is challenged, and diversity and debate flourish. This is much overstated. Our universities are embedded in Australian capitalism; they are economically and ideologically beholden to it. Ideas deemed too dangerous to the status quo have historically been repressed.
The Australian establishment ardently backs Israel, regardless of the atrocities it commits, because it is a loyal member of the Western imperialist bloc. The Palestine solidarity movement of the last year has threatened the ideological myth of Israel as a defender of democracy and freedom. The federal and state governments, as well as the billionaire-backed mainstream media, have denounced the movement from day one. Universities, which can feel the pressure of upholding their liberal image, took a looser stance to begin with. But now they have fallen into line.
The excuses that universities have used to justify the repression in recent months are astonishing. For instance, in suspending the Students for Palestine club at UNSW, Arc, the body that oversees clubs and student life, alleged that the mere presence of pro-Palestine posters caused damage to the “psychosocial safety” of the university community. It’s pretty jarring to anyone who has watched footage of dead Gazan babies being pulled from bombed buildings to hear that putting up posters advertising a student meeting is a threat to “psychosocial safety”.
Student activists at the UTS in Sydney have also apparently harmed the psyches of staff and students by handing out a leaflet for an event titled “exposing UTS ties to genocide”. Students were informed by security that the vice-chancellor said the use of the word would be “triggering”.
At RMIT, students who made use of an empty lecture theatre for a political meeting after a Palestine solidarity rally received disciplinary hearing notices that insinuate the students were celebrating terrorist attacks on Israel. They imply that the mere sight of a keffiyeh caused anxiety and threatened the wellbeing of staff and students.
The phrase “From the river to the sea” has been banned by multiple universities, including ANU, where students were warned that the phrase was “harmful”, and at Monash, where banners and placards with the phrase were seized. Monash has also disciplined two students for putting up pro-Palestine stickers—one was dragged out of class by security.
As mentioned, some universities have altered their campus policy guidelines to restrict protests by demanding that students first seek approval from management. While they refuse to spell it out, the motive for this is to shut down pro-Palestine activism. For instance, at Sydney University, the new Campus Access Policy has been used only to shut down Palestine-related events, such as a bake sale, or discipline students who organised a Palestine rally. Other non-Palestine-related events that broke the new guidelines have not been touched.
RMIT is altering its “Property Management Procedure” and the “Health, Safety and Wellbeing Policy”. The changes will give unilateral power to the director of Property Services to bar room bookings or “protest or protest related activity” that might cause “financial or reputational” damage to the university. Like the Campus Access Policy, it also prohibits camping—a clear reference to the encampments.
According to an anonymous staff member who works in the policy department, an earlier draft of the policy changes was so restrictive and undemocratic that the policy team rebelled against the directives of management, which was forced to revise the policy. This staff member also reported that the emails about the policy included “Palestine protests” in the subject line.
Last month, Swinburne University in Melbourne’s inner east made the extraordinary move to remove the Islamic Student Society’s chosen prayer leader and replace them with a university-appointed chaplain, and stationed guards at the entrance to the prayer rooms to bar those without a student card. Students feel that this act of religious repression happened because the students frequently make references to Palestinian oppression in their prayers.
It’s a terrible precedent that a university can interfere with students’ religious freedoms. And it highlights the real social problem in the wake of Israel’s genocide in Gaza: the ramping up of Islamophobia. Jewish students have not had their prayers or events shut down by any university across the country. There has been no enquiry into the impacts of the war on Muslim students. This again speaks to the selective outrage and enforcement of restrictions by university administrations.
Universities frequently celebrate the struggles of the past. Students learn about the movements against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid in history degrees. Universities use photos of protests from the ’70s and ’80s in their advertising material to future students. UNSW proudly displays a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela. But university managements opposed those movements when they were happening, and they are repressing the students who are confronting the modern equivalents.
The absurdity at the heart of this issue is that the students and staff who are facing repression are those calling simply for peace, for an end to the war. Yet they are being suspended, expelled, harassed and intimidated. Some staff may even lose their jobs for speaking up for Palestine. The universities are telling us that right is wrong and wrong is right. This is the reality of campus life for socially progressive students and staff. It’s a reality that must be challenged.
