Universities crack down on Palestine solidarity
To celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017, La Trobe University’s advertising campaign featured the slogan “Fighting for change before hashtags” accompanied by inspiring images of student activism. Melbourne University’s long-time promotional branding encourages us to “Dream Large”, and Monash University wants us to “#changeit”. To prospective students, universities market themselves as progressive institutions where “Big Ideas” (Melbourne University again) are debated, and thinking is cutting edge. For current students, it’s a repressive atmosphere where if you dare stand up to genocide, you get threatened with expulsion, dragged through disciplinary tribunals and denied natural justice.
Across Australian universities, a crackdown on the right to protest and freedom of speech aimed at pro-Palestine activism is currently in full swing. At Monash University in Melbourne, nine students have been subject to disciplinary hearings for their participation in the campus Gaza solidarity encampment. At La Trobe University, also in Melbourne, two students have been threatened with disciplinary measures for their involvement in similar activity. At Melbourne’s Deakin University, two students faced drawn-out disciplinary hearings, one resulting in suspension.
At ANU in Canberra, a student was expelled for publicly stating their support for Palestinian resistance. Curtin University in Perth, ANU and Monash have all banned or restricted the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, and Melbourne’s Swinburne University has asked the police to stop students participating in political activity. Melbourne University has used Wi-Fi connections to track students who participated in an occupation of a university building. At Sydney University and the University of New South Wales, administrations have changed their student charters to restrict nearly all forms of protest, particularly aimed at future encampments.
Universities are a law unto themselves when it comes to decision-making and discipline—students enter a realm reminiscent of post-9/11 repression when they are charged. In most cases, students have been told not to discuss their charges with others. At Monash, students accused of misconduct weren’t allowed to view the evidence against them, outside of a limited window and under the supervision of a university employee.
Madi Curkovic, one of the disciplined Monash students said of the experience: “We were not allowed to show anybody the emails we received from the university, nor were we provided with the evidence against us and were banned from being on the lawns where our encampment was set up”.
One student subject to disciplinary action at Deakin University told Red Flag they were treated as guilty before any evidence was presented, and the university official put in charge of their hearing eventually recused herself after concerns were raised about bias. Another said the university failed to provide her with all the evidence they were using against her. That student was later suspended.
The only recourse for students found guilty of misconduct is an appeal to the same institution that found them guilty, or to take the university to court. This is obviously prohibitive for most students.
This crackdown is not in response to anything “radical” by the historical standard of the Australian student movement. What student activists have done is the basic bread and butter of political activism: talking to fellow students, raising awareness, collecting names on petitions and holding protests.
James Gallagher, a socialist at Swinburne University, told Red Flag that the police were called to shut down a stall he was staffing, which involved a table with petitions, political leaflets and badges. “First, security came and told us to pack up”, he said. “When we refused, they called the police.”
Universities are traditionally no-go zones for police, and the right of students to engage in political activity and hold protests is similarly well established. But during the Gaza encampments on university campuses across Australia, the question of whether or not police could break up student camps on university grounds, as the authorities did in the US, became hotly contested. University charters, local by-laws and regulations, criminal law and human rights charters were all consulted, by both sides. In the end, no cops were used against the student protesters. But in the wash-up of these camps, university administrations are trying to intimidate students and prevent similar protests from happening again.
One tactic involves administrations changing the rules of engagement to shut down free speech and restrict the right to protest. At the University of Sydney, the new “campus access plan” restricts the rights of students to use a megaphone, hang a banner, set up a table, or organise a rally on a road for which 72-hours’ notice hasn’t been given. Violating the code can result in disciplinary action. The administration has banned anything that might make for an effective, disruptive political action. The University of New South Wales has also updated its rules and regulations. Deaglan Goodwin, vice president of the student union at Sydney University said:
“The timing is not accidental at all. It comes after the incredibly successful Gaza Solidarity Camp at Sydney University. The spectre of the encampment haunts the campus access policy—a lot of it targets specifically anything that can be used to set up or maintain a protest camp site on campus”.
Even students going through official channels to show support for Palestine have faced pushback from the universities. Students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) called a student general meeting through the student union, to take a position in solidarity with Palestine and against weapons companies conducting research on campus.
The university administration’s response has been to withhold information about how many students are needed to meet quorum, block room bookings and instruct staff to bar students from making announcements in classes. Students holding a stall to promote the meeting were threatened with police involvement. The education officer for the QUT student union, Isabella Foley, described the intimidation tactics by the university:
“Management have encouraged staff to call security on students ‘delivering a political message or garnering support for protest activities’ to classes. Students have been told that saying ‘QUT supports genocide’ could result in repercussions from the university. Rather than threatening us, the university should be cutting ties with Israel and expressing opposition to its genocide.”
Pro-Israel students, although a lot less active than pro-Palestine ones, have not been met with the same repression. At Monash University, pro-Israel stalls have attracted no harassment from the university, despite the fact that the Israeli flag would likely cause distress to Arab and Palestinian students.
Pro-Israel students physically and sexually harassed students at the Monash Gaza solidarity camp, yet not a single pro-Israel activist has been disciplined for this behaviour. In one case, a Muslim woman was stalked on the way to her car, and another has been subject to vicious online attacks. Madi Curkovic, a pro-Palestine activist at Monash, said: “Almost every day we faced down violent counterdemonstrations by supporters of Israel, who were allowed by the university to enter the encampment to harass and assault student protesters”. This double standard reflects the allegiance universities have to Israel.
During the Gaza solidarity encampments, university vice-chancellors wrote to the attorney general asking for legal advice on the slogan “From the river to the sea” and the term “intifada”. Essentially, they were asking the government to provide them with a reason to persecute pro-Palestine activists more viciously. Despite so far receiving no definitive response, administrations have cracked down on the slogan anyway.
At Monash, security seized banners and placards with “From the river to the sea” written on them, and even snatched a sign off of a Jewish student that said “Jews against genocide”. Students were told they could face disciplinary measures if they chanted the phrase. Students at Curtin University and the Australian National University have likewise received written notices barring them from displaying the phrase “From the river to the sea” on banners.
Universities aren’t the only supposedly liberal institutions that are cracking down on expressions of support for Palestine. Just this month, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancelled Jayson Gillham’s piano performance because it was dedicated to journalists murdered in Gaza. Although they later backtracked, the message to artists was clear: any reference to the rights of Palestinians is not welcome. This is in stark contrast to the stance the orchestra management was happy to take in support of Ukraine in 2022, when they dedicated an entire concert to raising money for the victims of Russia’s invasion, with—rightly—no concern about offending Russians.
After a Sydney Theatre Company performance of the play The Seagull last year, actors wore keffiyehs, a traditional Palestinian scarf, for the curtain call to display solidarity with Palestine. Management responded by issuing an apology for the actors’ actions after they received complaints from supporters of Israel. At the State Library of Victoria, an event was cancelled due to three authors airing pro-Palestine views on social media.
On the streets as well as the stage, the right to political expression is under attack. In liberal Melbourne, the council is attempting to restrict the right to do stalls during the weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations. With the threat of fines and police intervention, local Palestinian craft stall holders and political organisations have been hemmed into the State Library forecourt, barred from distributing information on the street.
As long as Israel remains firmly part of the Western imperial alliance, challenging it will be controversial. On university campuses especially, as long as cross-institutional ties with Israeli universities continue to be cultivated and companies that profit off of the war industry have research partnerships with Australian institutions, challenging Israel will be beyond what university administrations are willing to accept.
When the right-wing media talk about university students, they paint an image of snowflakes too scared to talk about things they disagree with. It turns out this is actually a description of the bureaucrats who run our universities.
Despite the censorious attitude that abounds on campuses, pro-Palestine activists and socialists are finding ways to stand up for Palestine and are winning support. Thousands of students are showing up for student general meetings in solidarity with Palestine, and in a number of cases, students who have challenged university discipline procedures have been successful. They have also attracted some high-profile support, including from Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam and human rights organisations.
It is to their eternal shame that Australian university administrations have so far remained silent in the face of genocide and the destruction of every single university and most schools in Gaza. At the beginning of the current war, universities released statements condemning Hamas and largely ignoring the fact that Israel was responding with intense bombardments of the civilian population in Gaza.
Monash University wrote on 10 October: “We are especially disturbed by the attacks on civilians by Hamas”. RMIT was “greatly saddened” by the “humanitarian impacts” but made no acknowledgement of the fact that Israel was murdering Palestinians. Sydney University “abhors terrorism”. None of these universities have spoken out against the war crimes of Israel. None of them have cut ties with the Israeli government. All of these statements refer to antisemitism and have only a casual nod to the impact on Palestinians and those subjected to Islamophobia.
Writing in the leftist publication Sidecar, Ussama Makdisi refers to this as the “Palestinian exception”. He writes, “Yet the heart of the Palestine exception is not simply the crude denial of Palestinian history and humanity. More significant is the constant overwriting of this history by a different one: that of modern European antisemitism ... With this act of substitution, the ongoing reality of Palestinian slaughter is erased from ethical consideration”.
Supporters of Palestine continue to face obstacles, repression and accusations of perpetrating harm towards supporters of Israel. But whatever discipline they want to mete out, we’ll fight. Students know we are on the right side of history.
