In June, I became the first and only Victorian university student suspended for leading a Gaza solidarity encampment. In the last week of August, after months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures and a fightback against the university, that suspension was overturned. 
Our solidarity encampment was four days old when Deakin University charged me with misconduct. We set up tents in the centre of campus, establishing a peaceful protest expressing opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and joining the global solidarity movement with the Palestinians. We also wanted to pressure the university to break partnerships with weapons manufacturers.
Deakin aspires to be Australia’s “most progressive university”. However, it was one of the most authoritarian universities in the country in terms of handling the encampment. Management taped off 200 metres of the campus walkway to block students from getting close to the tents. 
Security guards asked any student walking through, even those on their way to class, to show their identification card. The university repeatedly deleted emails about the camp from staff inboxes, issued misconduct warnings to every student identified as having slept at the camp, and initiated lengthy discipline processes against two students. 
The university trampled on the right to free speech, the right to peacefully protest, even the right to a fair trial. 
The chair of the misconduct committee that suspended me recused herself from the hearing of another student immediately after being accused of political bias. 
I was not provided with any complaints made against me before or during the hearing. After much campaigning—by me, other students and staff—and with the help of the Human Rights Legal Centre and the Jewish Council of Australia, who wrote to Deakin on my behalf, the decision was declared a mistrial. 
I won the right to another hearing with an entirely new committee, which overturned my suspension. 
This is a huge win for the right to protest on campus. The encampment at Deakin was one of nine encampments established around the country, all of which faced backlashes from university managers and supporters of Israel. 
In Victoria, more than 30 students were threatened with discipline. Now, all of us have won and can continue standing up for Palestinian justice and for an end to the horrific bombing of Gaza. 
It’s appalling that Deakin dragged me and other students through months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures for protesting against genocide. But I know that we’re on the right side of history. 
Every university in the Gaza Strip has been bombed. Students like me have a responsibility to stand up for the students there who are being denied a voice—or their lives. 
Renee Nayef is a member of Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative.

Renee Nayef 

How Deakin University tried to trample on students’ rights—and failed

Students at Melbourne’s Deakin University held a special general meeting on 28 August to express solidarity with Palestine, despite their student association trying to stop them. More than 250 students gathered to consider four motions, including one calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza and another demanding the university cut ties with weapons companies and divest from Israel. 
Alec Ferguson and Lara Jarrar, both members of Deakin Students for Palestine, moved and seconded the motion against Israel’s genocide. Ferguson described the horror in Palestine: “Nothing has been spared. Every piece of vital infrastructure, water facilities, schools, hospitals, medical facilities—nothing has escaped Israel’s bombing campaign”. 
Five students attended the meeting carrying an Israeli flag and photos of hostages. One spoke against the motion, arguing that Israel is not guilty of apartheid because “In all the big industries you will see a whole lot of people of Arab descent” and that genocide is not happening because “Israel does not have genocidal intent”. 
In response, another member of Deakin Students for Palestine quoted various Israeli ministers and an army reservist and veteran, Ezra Yachin, about the goal of the Gaza offensive: “Yachin, in an effort to boost soldier morale in October last year, was recorded saying, ‘Be triumphant and finish them off. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live’”. Jackson also noted that in the view of the International Court of Justice (“World Court), Israel’s actions likely constitute genocide. 
When the motion was put to a vote, hundreds voted in favour and only a handful against. 
The divestment motion, along with two others about supporting refugees and the right to protest, also passed by a very large majority. 
The special general meeting was called by Deakin Students for Palestine, after the Deakin University Student Association refused to, in defiance of its own constitution. The association is controlled by students aligned with the Australian Labor Party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. 
According to the student association’s constitution, if 250 members sign a petition to request a special general meeting, then the meeting must take place and any motions passed become official association policy. Pro-Palestine students at Deakin collected more than 700 signatures, yet the association refused to organise the meeting, claiming that “It would not be appropriate ... to adopt a position in relation to the conflict”. 
University management also tried to sabotage the meeting by cancelling the room booking, threatening to discipline sympathetic staff and getting security to tear down posters promoting the meeting. Jasmine Duff, who chaired the meeting, told Red Flag, “To have 250 students show up and vote to adopt the demands of the Gaza solidarity encampment was a significant vindication of the encampment. Even better, it happened just one day after the university was forced to overturn the suspension of Renee Nayef, one of the leaders of the camp. The university has been trying to discredit pro-Palestine activism, but hasn’t succeeded.”
The students who attended made a moral stand, not just against Israel’s atrocities, but also against the university administration and student representatives who support or are silent in the face of genocide.

Heather Maltby

Deakin students support Palestine despite official sabotage

At least 250 students crammed into the La Trobe University’s Agora cinema on 27 August to show their support for Palestine. The special general meeting was called after more than 700 students signed a petition demanding one. It was the biggest pro-Palestine meeting in La Trobe’s history, and the largest in-person general meeting in a decade.
The meeting considered three motions. One called for an immediate and just end to the war on Gaza, the second for La Trobe to cut ties with companies aiding Israel’s genocide and the third for the dismissal of the vice-chancellor for his role in inhibiting pro-Palestine activism on campus.
Socialist activist and Students for Palestine member Leanna Nguyen opened the meeting, declaring Israel’s attack on Gaza to be “the greatest crime of our generation, and every institution, including our university, has told us to keep our heads down and look away as thousands of Palestinians are murdered. Let’s make it clear today, that even if university management wants to maintain their ties to apartheid and genocide, La Trobe University students are, and always will, be pro-Palestine”.
La Trobe has ties with weapons company Honeywell and surveillance company CISCO, both of which operate on the Bundoora campus. Honeywell produces the engines for MQ-9 Reaper drones, used for reconnaissance in southern Gaza as recently as last November, while CISCO has been a part of integrating settlements in the occupied West Bank into Israel’s technology networks. 
La Trobe’s vice-chancellor, Theo Farrell, is the face of La Trobe’s support for Israel’s genocide. Before coming to La Trobe, Farrell advised the UK government about its invasion of Afghanistan and helped set up the Ramsay Institute of Western Civilisation at Wollongong University. He has published numerous articles about defence and war, including the ethics of artificial intelligence in warfare, and until recently had the X handle “@warprof”.
He has made no public statement opposing Israel’s war on Gaza and has threatened discipline against students who were involved with the Gaza solidarity encampment earlier in the year. For many students, he represents everything that is wrong with the corporate university. 
In the early 1970s, La Trobe students passed a similar vote of no confidence in their vice-chancellor, Archibald Glenn, for his involvement with chemical weapons used in the war on Vietnam. “There must be something in the water here at La Trobe”, said Students for Palestine activist Rory Gee, “because here we are again. Our new vice-chancellor is a warmonger too”.
All three motions passed almost unanimously, with only one vote against. The university has until the 27 September to release a statement in support of an immediate and just ceasefire.

Bronwyn Murphy

Alicia Griffiths

La Trobe students vote for Palestine

The battlelines on campuses have been drawn. On one side is the enormous institutional support for the military-industrial complex and the highly militarised state of Israel in particular. This takes the form of research deals between university administrations and companies like British Aerospace Engineering, Elbit Systems and Boeing, along with all sorts of direct partnerships with Israeli universities and institutions. These are reinforced by right-wing, pro-Israel student groups organised around the Australian Union of Jewish Students, as well as Liberal and Labor clubs that almost all back Israel.
On the other side is a movement of students and staff desperate to show solidarity with the people of Palestine, as they endure an unprecedented genocidal onslaught from Israel. These activists have organised a range of actions since 7 October. 
At the University of Sydney, a historic motion calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was endorsed by a mass meeting of 346 staff. Students for Palestine has organised more than a dozen
student strikes in cities across the country, with thousands of university students walking out of classes to show their opposition to the war. Their actions inspired high-school students to join their movement, which together resulted in the biggest student anti-war actions since the invasion of Iraq.
“The university and school strikes galvanised the movement and made headlines because we proved that young people were not going to sit by and watch while a population was being annihilated”, said Bella Beiraghi, a convener of Students for Palestine in Melbourne. 
Many of the activists who spoke to Red Flag
emphasised the diversity of the attendees and how they brought together activists from inner city and outer suburban areas and from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. “We were really inspired by the numbers of Arab and Muslim youth from the outer suburbs who joined our actions and stood up to the racism they are subject to, but there were also students from so many diverse backgrounds, it was really an amazing show of unity and solidarity”, explained Deaglan Godwin, the vice-president of Sydney University’s Student Representative Council. 
All this activity peaked in the student encampments late last semester, which established around a dozen camps on campuses across the country. The first and longest lasting was at Sydney University, which quickly inspired similar actions around the country. 
While each camp had its own characteristics, they all tapped into the growing support for Palestine among students and staff. For a month, the students dominated media headlines and raised awareness about the myriad links between Australian universities and Israel’s war and occupation.
But as the semester came to an end, the camps eventually wrapped up. While some universities made mealy-mouthed noises about acceding to some of the students’ demands regarding transparency in their dealings with weapons companies, mostly this was intended to deflect student and staff anger rather than change anything. A much more concerted campaign would be needed to force administrations to cut ties with weapons companies and Israel. The camps had played their part, now the struggle would have to continue in a new form. 
At this moment of uncertainty, student activists at the University of Queensland showed the way forward. Students there had the brilliant idea of calling a student general meeting to pass motions to condemn their university’s role in facilitating Israel’s war crimes and demand it cut ties with companies and institutions complicit in the occupation. 
Student general meetings are provided for in the constitutions of most Australian student unions. Although relatively rare these days, in more radical times they were regularly held both to determine the views of the student body and to direct democratically the activities and decide the policies of the student unions. They can be called by the student union officials, or can be triggered when a certain percentage of the student body signs a petition calling for one. “They’re more democratic than a vote of some small council behind closed doors”, explains Ella Guterridge, convener of Students for Palestine at the University of Queensland. “They allow hundreds—or thousands in the case of my university—of students to engage with arguments from both sides and make a considered decision on an issue as a collective”. 
Importantly, decisions made by these meetings are binding, becoming the official position of the student union regardless of the attitudes of office-bearers or their unelected staff.
The decision to call a student general meeting at the University of Queensland came after widespread mobilisation efforts coordinated by the local Students for Palestine chapter, which had just finished organising the largest encampment in the country. After weeks of mass protests, teach-ins and an occupation of the Boeing Centre on campus, students decided to call a mass meeting to gauge the views of the student body. Two thousand students showed up and voted almost unanimously for motions in support of Palestine. “We were overwhelmed by the response”, recalls Gutteridge. “This was the largest student meeting at UQ since the 1970s.” 
News of the triumph quickly spread across the country. “When we heard about what UQ had done, we just had to try it here too”, said Jasmine Alrawi, convener of Students for Palestine at Sydney University. Holidays forced students to take a breather, before they launched their campaign in the second semester. The Sydney University meeting was organised for 7 August and had the backing of the student union, which is controlled by an alliance of Socialist Alternative and the Grassroots Left. Around 800 people showed up, including at least 600 undergraduate students, overwhelmingly to show support for Palestine. “This wonderful turnout has made history on this campus, and reflects the impact of the camp we organised last semester”, explained Alrawi. “The students have spoken: This is a pro-Palestine campus!”
There were similarly successful meetings at RMIT in Melbourne, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, and the Australian National University in Canberra. Exactly 535 students registered at the RMIT event, supported by dozens of staff and community activists, with a few dozen more turning out at the much smaller Bundoora campus the following day. At least 600 showed up to pass a similar motion at QUT, a figure that came as a shock to campus organisers. “We can’t believe it. This student general meeting is the largest student action ever to take place on this campus, around any issue”, said Isabella Foley, who moved the motions.
Elsewhere the situation has been more contested. At the University of Adelaide, Students for Palestine collected nearly double the number of signatures required to call a general meeting. But the Student Representative Council—run by right-wing careerists—refused to meet for a month, making it impossible for the petition to be officially received. Fortunately, an unusual quirk of the union’s constitution allows for a legally binding meeting to take place even without endorsement by the representative council as long as 300 signatures are collected calling for it, and 150 students show up on the day. Both these hurdles were easily cleared. More than 200 students turned up to pass the motions unanimously. “We were thrilled with the turnout, given the sabotage from our elected reps”, explained El Hall, convener of Students for Palestine on the campus. “The student body, the university and the media have acknowledged the meeting’s legitimacy, so it’s a massive win for us. But going forward, we’re going to need to kick out these conservative creeps and have a union that stands on the side of justice.” 
The bureaucrats in the University of Melbourne Student Union took a different tack in their efforts to sabotage the meeting. At first the general secretary avoided his office so as to avoid having to receive the 1,200 student signatures calling for a student general meeting. Then when a digital scan was sent, the secretary—the second in charge of a multimillion-dollar organisation—claimed to lack the skill required to open a pdf file. After this pathetic stalling failed, the union’s executive asked law firm Slater and Gordon to find a legal technicality they could use to avoid following through on their democratic obligations. The firm, which is closely tied to the Labor Party, obligingly provided advice that suggested that the motions calling on Israel to stop its genocide in Gaza were unconstitutional. A big fight ensued at the subsequent student council, where the majority refused to accept the petitions or call a student general meeting. When Students for Palestine activists insisted the meeting would go ahead regardless, a compromise was reached in which council eventually came round to endorsing a mass meeting on Palestine, albeit with no formal legal status. 
On the day of the meeting, around 800 students showed up to vote on a motion demanding the university break ties with Israel. This included a sizeable contingent of about 150 students from the Victorian College of the Arts, who had marched up Swanston Street to the main campus with typical flair. Their energy was infectious, and the crowd was buzzing in anticipation.
Bella Beiraghi, an education officer in the student union, explained what happened next: “Given that the student union had eventually, against its will, backed our meeting, we gave them the right to say a few words at the start. The president then decided to use her time to announce to everyone that the vote would not be legally binding! She was rightly booed off the microphone and never returned.” Oskar Martin, Indigenous representative for the student union, spoke after the president and explained to the crowd the ways in which the Student Union majority had tried to block the meeting from going ahead, and reminded attendees of the union’s earlier decision to abandon its support for boycott, divestment and sanctions measures against Israel. “We will continue mobilising until the union fully backs the cause of Palestinian liberation”, he declared to wild cheers. 
Subsequent speakers slammed the university and the Labor government for their complicity in Israel’s genocide. Palestinian socialist Yasmeen Atieh had seconded the motion, and spoke to condemn Albanese’s attacks on protesters. She called out the hypocrisy of his “concerns” about the welfare of parliamentarians who have never been harmed, while tens of thousands of her people have been murdered by Israeli bombs. Nobody took up the option of speaking against the motion, and it passed without dissent.
On many campuses, these meetings are by far the largest campus actions for Palestine that have ever taken place. They reflect the impact of the mass anti-war movement that has sprung up since Israel began its slaughter of the people of Gaza. 
But the students are not finished. At a number of campuses, including Deakin, La Trobe and Monash, the battle to call the meetings is still ongoing. There are also plans for further student strikes in Sydney. 
In Melbourne, Students for Palestine is working with a coalition of groups to organise a picket of the upcoming Land Forces 2024 convention, an odious military exposition hosted and funded by the Victorian Labor government. “This festival celebrating weapons of mass destruction is a natural target for student activists”, explained Jasmine Duff, a co-convener of Students for Palestine in Melbourne, and one of the organisers of the protest against the Land Forces event. “We discovered recently that RMIT—a publicly funded university—is planning to present research on hypersonic missiles at Land Forces”, she said. “What a disgrace!”
The students’ efforts show no sign of letting up. “We’re so proud of the response of students across Australia, but we still have a lot to do”, Alrawi says. “Our challenge is to turn these huge mobilisations into an ongoing movement that can finally break ties between our universities and an international military-industrial complex that profits from war and devastation. We won’t accept any half-measures.”

Omar Hassan

Students turn out in record numbers for Palestine

Queensland University of Technology students have voted overwhelmingly to demand that the university divest from arms companies and Israel.
More than 600 students attended the student guild’s 15 August special general meeting for Palestine, held at the Gardens Point campus.
QUT brags that its Centre for Robotics collaborates with the US Air Force, Boeing, Thales and Rheinmetall. The latter companies are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and profit from it.
The SGM was visibly pro-Palestine: several Palestinian flags were draped on railings, and only two students spoke against cutting ties with weapons companies. Their arguments included, “Don’t you know companies like Boeing do good research, too?”, “Sometimes the US Air Force provides aid in natural disasters” and “All companies do terrible things. Nestlé still uses a lot of slave labour”.
There wasn’t much sympathy for these arguments. Hundreds of students who have been boycotting, protesting, and donating to Palestine over the last year chanted “Free Palestine!” in response. 
The motion to cut ties with weapons companies passed with 576 for and 70 against. About 200 students subsequently marched to the Chancellery to deliver the message to millionaire Vice-Chancellor Margaret Sheil. 
While proceedings went smoothly on 15 August, the lead-up to the meeting was anything but. QUT is one of, if not the most, undemocratic university campuses in the country. The QUT Guild is ruled by a board of directors, which gives bureaucrats whose interests align with the university significant power to veto decisions made by elected student representatives. 
Students and guild-affiliated clubs are banned from putting up posters around the campus. There are severe restrictions on setting up stalls, handing out leaflets and engaging with students on campus. 
Harassment increased significantly once Students for Palestine activists collected the required number of signatures to call the meeting. The university hounded students for promoting the meeting, who were told that their leaflets and posters had been banned as “political propaganda”.
On one occasion, students wearing guild t-shirts handing out leaflets for the SGM were told to leave campus by a security supervisor. The volunteers explained that the guild was constitutionally required to inform students about the meeting. 
In response, the supervisor said, “Campus is supposed to be apolitical”. The volunteers replied that this violated their right to freedom of speech. The supervisor said that if the volunteers didn’t move, he would call the police and tell them that the students were trespassing.
The university has twice emailed staff, informing them that students were banned from making lecture announcements. The second email was sent days before our mass meeting and accused student activists of being outside agitators. 
In a meeting to arrange the SGM, a university administrator warned Students for Palestine members that the university would take chants like “QUT supports genocide” very seriously—implying that the university would consider disciplinary action against students.
University managers even called the police onto the campus twice. The first time was for a careers event that Rheinmetall had been invited to, and the second was for the SGM itself. Guild bureaucrats and university administrators threatened that once the main room and the single overflow room were full, police would remove everyone else from the campus.
QUT calls itself “the university for the real world”. It’s a fitting tagline. As in the real world, anti-genocide campaigners are hounded by the establishment. But we didn’t give in. We defied the authorities—and won.

Isabella Foley

Erin Milne

QUT students defy university to vote for Palestine

More than 600 Melbourne University students attended a mass meeting and rally on 15 August to demand that the university end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. The meeting was the largest pro-Palestine action ever held on the campus.
Oskar Martin, Students for Palestine member and Indigenous socialist, moved the meeting’s only motion. It called on the administration to “fully divest from weapons companies and cut all ties with the state of Israel, Israeli corporations and Israeli academic institutions in line with the global boycott, divestment, sanctions movement”. 
In his speech, Martin condemned the university, arguing that “what matters most to them is investments that boost their portfolios and power”. He then turned his fire on the officials in the University of Melbourne Student Union. “The student union didn’t want this meeting to happen. They previously backtracked on supporting BDS ... but we kept fighting and we won!” 
The student politicians who control the student union are mostly from factions associated with the Australian Labor Party. Despite their pretending to champion students’ rights and democracy, their approach to the special general meeting was one of sabotage. 
Students for Palestine activists gathered the signatures of 1,200 students to demand the union call a special general meeting on Palestine, as the constitution requires. In response, the union hired lawyers from Labor-aligned law firm Slater and Gordon to find a legal basis to prevent the meeting happening. 
The union has form in this regard. In 2022 the union adopted a motion in support of Palestine and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. But after legal action brought by Liberal Party-aligned student Justin Riazaty, the union abandoned its position. 
The lawsuit was settled in February this year after the union agreed, in the middle of a genocide, to <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/university-melbourne-student-union-betrays-palestine">rescind its support for Palestine</a> and pay Riazaty tens of thousands of dollars. The student union has since sought to censor pro-Palestine activity in the union, prohibiting office-bearers from using their budgets and social media to oppose Israel’s genocide. 
But their winning streak ended on Thursday afternoon. The student union officials watched, aghast, as hundreds of students descended on the amphitheatre wearing keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and holding placards inscribed on one side with “Unimelb must divest” and on the other “Students for Palestine”. 
“Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!”, the students roared. Cheers and impromptu speeches echoed around the amphitheatre as student union staff sought shelter behind a barricade they had set up to prevent Students for Palestine activists from reaching the stage.
From the stage, I opened the meeting (to the president’s horror), and the floor was ours. “Put your hand up if you’re here today to stand against Israel, to stand against our government, to stand against our university and to fight for a free Palestine!”, I asked the crowd. A sea of hands shot up in response. Chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” made the meeting feel more like an open-air rally. 
At one point the student union president tried to address the crowd to explain why the union hadn’t done more to publicly support Palestine. She was heckled, “You voted to rescind the motion!”, and quickly vacated the stage. 
Students hadn’t come to this action for mealy-mouthed words or empty platitudes. We get that from the federal Labor government every day. The crowd was electric with righteous indignation at our university’s complicity in genocide. Yasmeen Atieh, a Palestinian socialist and member of Students for Palestine, told the crowd: 
“All over the world, students and workers have stood up to their universities and governments, declaring that we will not sit silent whilst people are being killed. Estimates are now that 186,000 have likely been murdered. From opposing the war in Vietnam to fighting against South African apartheid, students have been at the forefront of movements to spark change for decades. And today we’re making history again. Every one of us is making our voices heard, telling the university that it needs to divest. We are telling our government, the Labor Party, that we will not stop and we will not rest until Palestine is free.”

Students overwhelmingly voted up the motion, followed by a victory march to the vice-chancellor's office, where we stuck our petitions to his office surrounds, warning: “We’ll be back!” 
It was a victorious day for Palestine solidarity activism, and a credit to all the activists who refused to accept the union’s cowardice on Palestine, who refused to give up and who campaigned tirelessly to make the meeting a success.

Bella Beiraghi

Melbourne University mass meeting declares support for Palestine

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.

Anneke Demanuele

Universities crack down on Palestine solidarity

Sydney University students have organised the largest Palestine solidarity action ever held on the campus—an 800-strong student general meeting (SGM) that voted for the university to cut ties with Israel.
Those ties include research programs with Thales, the sixth-largest weapons company in the world. In collaboration with Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, Thales produces the Watchkeeper drone, which has been used in Gaza. Sydney University also maintains exchange programs with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Institute of Technology, which work closely with the Israeli military and security agencies.
The first SGM at Sydney University was held in 1971 and concerned another apartheid regime. Students at that meeting voted to boycott the South African rugby tour, which was eventually cancelled after students, trade unionists and Indigenous activists harangued and harassed the team across the country.
“This meeting represents a lot of hope”, Jasmine Al-Rawi said as she opened the meeting on 7 August. The activist group Students for Palestine, of which Al-Rawi is the convener, called the SGM.
The lecture theatre in the Eastern Avenue Auditorium slowly filled with hundreds of students. The queue outside stretched for more than 100 metres. Soon, an overflow lecture theatre was opened, and students filled that too. It wasn’t until half an hour after the scheduled start that everyone had finally taken their seat.
The meeting was chaired by Al-Rawi and Harrison Brennan, president of the Sydney University Students’ Representative Council (SRC). In her opening remarks, Al-Rawi spoke about the history of SGMs, and how they are an opportunity for students to practise a kind of mass, participatory democracy that is at odds with the usual running of the university.
SRC Education Officers Shovan Bhattarai and Grace Street moved the main motion of the night. “Above this lecture theatre there is an ad for the uni, which claims it is about ‘leadership for good’”, Bhattarai said. “But we know that is bullshit.”
After Bhattarai and Street introduced the motion, a Zionist and member of the Young Liberal Club spoke to oppose it. The audience was unsympathetic, to say the least. When the vote occurred, the supporters of Israel could muster only half a dozen or so to vote against the motion.
Anti-Zionist Jewish activist Yasmine Johnson rebutted the Zionist arguments. “A state that is based upon the oppression, the genocide, the apartheid of the Palestinian people—that is not a project of Judaism or of humanity”, she said. Johnson pointed to protests and sit-ins in America led by Jewish Voice for Peace, whose slogan has been “Not in our name”.
After the meeting ended, students marched out of the lecture halls and onto Eastern Avenue. Their destination was the Michael Spence Administration Building and Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott’s office for an impromptu protest to relate news of the student vote. 
The SGM came after ten months of organising and mobilising. In April, Sydney University became the first university outside of North America to establish an encampment, which activists set up on the Quadrangle lawns and which lasted for more than two months. The protests and teach-ins held at the camp spread awareness of the university’s ties to Israel, contributing to the overwhelming vote. 
Since the camp’s winding down, activists in Students for Palestine have been furiously getting the word out about the SGM. The patient and determined work of reaching out to everybody possible and making an argument about why they needed to be at the meeting laid the basis for the SGM’s success. 
The meeting also tried to engage students less involved or familiar with activism. By aiming to bring wider layers of students into the movement, Palestine solidarity activists can begin to mobilise to disrupt the business of usual of the university. That is the only strategy that could force our universities to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Deaglan Godwin

Sydney University students vote to cut ties with Israel

Where in the world do you expect police to be called on students for collecting signatures on a petition? If you’re thinking of Russia or China, on this occasion you’re wrong. In fact, it was at Melbourne’s inner-east campus of Swinburne University that police were called to stop students from exercising their basic democratic rights. 
Early on 7 August, two security guards informed me and several other Students for Palestine (SFP) activists that their managers had instructed them to stop us from asking students to sign a petition and handing out leaflets. The petition was to request a general meeting of the Swinburne Student Union. When we refused, citing our democratic rights, security called the police.
The police officers who attended the scene told us the university had “revoked the right” to leaflet and wanted us to “leave campus” with the petition. If we refused, the police told us, Swinburne could declare us—enrolled students—trespassers and have us physically removed from the campus.
David Mejia-Canales from the Human Rights Law Centre said of this attack: “Students should not be punished or threatened with police action just for peacefully standing up for human rights”.
For months now, the student wing of the Palestine movement has been highlighting Australian universities’ links to Israel as it continues to destroy Gaza. Thousands of students in Australia and beyond have taken part in solidarity encampments and strikes in solidarity with Palestine. 
SFP Swinburne has highlighted Swinburne University’s ties to weapons manufacturers Boeing and Thales, as well as Vice-Chancellor Pascale Quester’s sponsored trips to Israel to encourage trade between Australia and Israel.
Hundreds of students have already signed SFP’s petition demanding that Swinburne “cut all ties to weapons companies” and declaring “no confidence in our vice-chancellor”. The administration’s response has been unambiguous: shut up and sit down, or get arrested.
Swinburne’s actions are part of a broader clamp-down across Australian universities. Whether it’s dragging Melbourne University students through hearings for months over a building occupation, threatening to suspend or expel encampment leaders at Deakin and Monash, or the draconian new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/free-speech-under-attack-at-sydney-university">“campus access policy” at Sydney University</a>, student activism in support of Palestine is under attack everywhere.
Encouragingly, more than 300 people, mainly Swinburne students and staff, have signed an <a href="http://tinyurl.com/SwinFreeSpeech">open letter</a> or come past our “illegal” stall to express support. We’re not going to stop fighting while Gaza is being bombed, and we won’t be intimidated by the administration. We plan to involve many more students in the fight for a free Palestine.

Johnny Gerdes

Swinburne calls the cops on students for petitioning about Palestine

The University of Sydney has introduced measures to clamp down on political expression and protest on campus. It is an escalation by management, and targets students campaigning against Israel’s genocide and fighting for a more just university.
On 27 June, university management quietly released its new “campus access policy”. The document states that organisers of any campus protest must give at least 72 hours’ advance notice to the university. The university assures us that “prior approval is not required”. However, there are conditions attached.
The policy contains a list of activities requiring prior approval, which is basically an ABC of activist essentials. It includes using “megaphones or amplifiers”—ubiquitous at any protest. It also includes “attaching materials, banners or structures to university buildings or fixtures” and “erecting temporary structures” such as booths, card tables, temporary enclosures, mobile structures and electronic signs. Under the policy, activists would need approval from the university to put up posters, hand out leaflets and distribute political literature. 
Then there is a list of “unacceptable activities”. Camping is high on it—undoubtedly a retaliation for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment that occupied the Quadrangle Lawns last semester. The list also includes “using a megaphone or other amplifier in close proximity to a person”. The document warns that anyone found to be engaging in these activities will be in breach of policy. The punishment? University security kick a student off campus. If you don’t comply? The document empowers security to detain people until the police arrive.
Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott is tightening the screws on student activists, who have humiliated the university over the past couple of months. The Gaza Solidarity Encampment shone a light on the university’s complicity with Israel’s genocide. Through rallies, teach-ins, class announcements and social media, activists highlighted to thousands of students the ties between Sydney University, weapons companies and the Israeli military.
Sydney University’s new measures align with similar moves at other universities. Students at the Australian National University, Melbourne University, Deakin University, La Trobe University and Adelaide University have faced disciplinary action in recent months for speaking out against the war on Palestine. 
Beneath empty statements about “respecting freedom of speech” and operating as a “marketplace of ideas”, universities across the country have proven to be hostile to activism against powerful political and commercial interests. While Sydney University honours the Aboriginal Freedom Rides of last century with a plaque at the very place the Gaza Solidarity Encampment pitched its tents, the activists of today are honoured with suspensions.
We refuse to accept these attacks on our democratic and civil rights. If they become the norm, they will rob Sydney University of the vibrant political culture for which it is known. Management’s measures extend not only to political causes, but to other activities. Must the Dog Society and the Drama Society beg Mark Scott for permission to advertise and promote their latest play or dog therapy session? In targeting pro-Palestine activists, university administrators have curtailed the rights and freedoms of all students and staff.
Students will fight these attacks on freedom of speech and our right to protest. Activists have written an <a>open letter</a> for students, staff, unions and other organisations to sign. Students for Palestine is planning a student general meeting in the second week of semester, which will consider a motion that university cut ties with Israel and repeal this draconian policy. We are determined to fight to defend our freedom of speech and right to protest.
Deaglan Godwin is vice president of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council.

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Universities crack down on Palestine solidarity

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Swinburne calls the cops on students for petitioning about Palestine

Free speech under attack at Sydney University

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