In the last two weeks of August, thousands of students across the country came together to condemn the Australian government’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to call on universities to end their ties with Israel. 
At mass meetings on nineteen campuses, nearly 5,000 students (more, if those who participated online are included) voted in the national student referendum on Palestine, organised by Students for Palestine and the National Union of Students. The motions—to censure the government and to cut university ties with Israel—both passed with the support of more than 97 percent of voters. The University of Queensland will vote on 3 September. 
The meetings were the biggest ever Palestine solidarity events on many campuses. And they were an indication that the tide of public opinion, particularly among young people, has well and truly turned against Israel’s crimes and our own government’s continued support for them. 
At Macquarie University, where more than 200 students packed a lecture theatre, one speaker related that her grandparents had been displaced in the 1948 Nakba—the campaign of massacres and violent evictions of Palestinians leading to the establishment of Israel. She was moved, she said, because she had never expected to see such numbers out to support Palestine at her own university. This growth in the Palestine solidarity movement is a trend visible nationwide. Students for Palestine clubs are now springing up even on small campuses in regional towns.
The votes were even more substantial on larger campuses with a history of Palestine solidarity activism. At the University of Melbourne, 640 students voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli government’s actions. Similarly, more than 600 attended at RMIT, and more than 500 at the University of Sydney. Hundreds of thousands across the world have now viewed footage of these referendums, some of which were broadcast from Sydney <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVUYyNoiw3A">on Al Jazeera</a>. 
In some places, handfuls of Zionist students and Liberal Party members attended meetings and spoke to justify Israel’s war on Gaza. Their arguments rested largely on the idea that pro-Palestine sentiment is making Jewish students on campus unsafe. Everywhere they spoke, they were confidently countered by students who are part of a genuinely anti-racist movement, which places the blame on Zionism and the Israeli state rather than Judaism, and which counts amongst its ranks increasing numbers of pro-Palestine Jewish students. Other speakers against the motions made the case for weapons companies, without which universities would lose funding. 
Most students, however, think their universities should conduct research to further humanity’s interests rather than to boost profit margins. For these students, the moral imperative to stand for justice far outweighs any concern about universities’ financial situations.
The national referendum initiative is part of a growing movement that aims to hold the Australian government and institutions accountable. The ever increasing horrors in Gaza have pushed larger numbers of students to get involved in activism, but students have also taken inspiration from the broader pro-Palestine movement. The 300,000-strong march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the historic national day of protests that followed, have mobilised and galvanised our side. 
While the protests have clearly put pressure on the government, nothing has been done to end Australia’s weapons trade with Israel or apply sanctions on the Israeli government. In fact, as students pointed out, Defence Minister Richard Marles has proudly declared that Australia is an “F-35 country”—part of the supply chain for the fighter jets Israel is using to obliterate Gaza. Universities have similarly refused to sever their ties to genocide. 
Our institutions say that they are committed to free thought and critical inquiry. But when it comes to criticisms of their affiliations with entities that contribute to the perpetuation of violence and occupation in Palestine, their real commitments become clear. Whether through research funding, partnerships with Israeli institutions or other forms of indirect support, universities across the country are complicit. 
Students who have spoken out over the past two years have been suspended, Palestine solidarity events have been banned, and, on many campuses, university security is more repressive than the police. Events like the referendum are helping to create more space to speak out about the genocide.
The referendum is not just about registering votes, but building momentum for sustained action on campuses and beyond. The votes in favour of the motions are an indication that, as in so many past movements against capitalism’s crimes, young people are on the right side of history. They demonstrate that we are not satisfied with promises about future Palestinian statehood while starvation ravages Gaza and the bombs continue to fall. They are a mandate for continued activism.

Yasmine Johnson

Thousands of students vote for Palestine

“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 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 genocide, and the university’s complicity in it. 
Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian author and academic, 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 discussions about how best to oppose genocide and 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”.

Alicia Griffiths

La Trobe staff and students speak out against university censorship

The National Union of Students has endorsed a call by Students for Palestine to hold a national student referendum on Palestine. Across the country, university campuses will hold mass meetings at which students will vote on the following motions:
1. Students censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We demand an end to all weapons sales to Israel by Australia and Australian companies, and call for sanctions on Israel. 
2. Students call on all Australian universities to end their complicity with Israel’s genocide by ceasing all partnerships with weapons companies.
The votes on each campus will be reported as they come in and collated into a national result. The intention is to send a clear message to the government and Australian universities that students will not stay silent in the face of their complicity in the Gaza genocide. 
The Albanese government has all but admitted that Australia is arming Israel through the export of crucial weapons components. As the Guardian
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/15/is-australia-supplying-weapons-to-bomb-gaza-heres-what-we-know-about-fighter-jet-parts-in-the-f-35-program">recently reported</a>, the company RUAG Australia is the only global supplier of a key part of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets used by Israel in Gaza. According to <a href="https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/ruag-australia-achieves-manufacturing-milestone-on-uplock-actuator-system-for-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program/">an Australian defence industry website</a>, the “uplock actuator system” opens and closes bay doors “to enable the F-35 to drop its payload more quickly and maintain its stealth capability”.
Australian universities enjoy research partnerships with and scholarship funding from major weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-35. This is what Defence Minister Richard Marles meant when he told David Speers on ABC’s Insiders that Australia is “<a href="https://youtu.be/uxUntSTXpGc?si=Yfo31D11IP3N1aK2">an F-35 country</a>”. 
The Labor government’s and universities’ complicity in the genocide is at odds with public sentiment, which continues to grow in favour of the besieged and starved Palestinians and for an end to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza. A <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-people-across-24-surveyed-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-netanyahu/">recent poll</a> conducted by Pew Research found that about three-quarters of Australians now have an unfavourable view of Israel. 
And why wouldn’t they? Anyone with eyes and a heart should feel outrage and horror at the images of one-year-old children dying of hunger while food sits in trucks only kilometres away. Or footage of American and Israeli soldiers using breadlines in Gaza for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpkZNAFwkc&amp;ab_channel=SenatorBernieSanders">target practice</a>. 
That broader public sentiment is echoed on university campuses, which continue to be major sites of protest and dissent on Gaza. The referendum is an opportunity for students across the country to send a vote of no confidence to our universities and our government, a mass and defiant gesture of dissent in the face of their complicity. 
It is important that the National Union of Students, the peak union body for university students across the country, supports and promotes the referendum. Members of Socialist Alternative on the NUS national executive have largely done this, pushing for the union to publicly condemn the genocide and support student protests. 
Across the country, student unions are generally run by different factions of Young Labor, meaning that the NUS operates as little more than an anaemic cheer squad for the ALP and a career stepping stone for Labor students. 
Members of Socialist Alternative in the NUS and in student unions across the country have consistently argued that our unions should not limit their horizons to those of a right-wing neoliberal Labor government that has stood steadfastly by Israel <a href="https://x.com/AlboMP/status/1710737658362876219">from the start</a>. It is not only our moral responsibility to stand against the crimes of our government and of Israel, but a vital question for the relevance and continued existence of student unionism in this country.
The national student referendum is an example of precisely the sort of thing student unions should be throwing themselves into, giving a lead to students who are sickened by the live-streamed images of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and outraged at the role the Labor government and our universities are playing in it. 
To join other students standing up and demanding to be counted, register at <a href="https://palestinereferendum.org/">palestinereferendum.org</a>.

James McVicar

Students to hold nationwide vote on Gaza

The University of Melbourne has begun construction on a new $2 billion “defence” research campus at Fishermans Bend. The campus will allow the university to further its collaboration with international arms manufacturers to design new weapons. 
Last year, students demanded that the university divest from partnerships with more than thirteen weapons companies. But now, the university is angling for even closer connections with the defence sector. This is despite at least two of the companies, Boeing and BAE Systems, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/06/states-and-companies-must-end-arms-transfers-israel-immediately-or-risk">being warned last year by the UN</a> that their transfers to Israel could make them complicit in war crimes. 
Now, UoM students are demanding that the university halt the construction of this “weapons campus” and end its complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The Citizen, a publication of the university’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships#:~:text=In%20an%20August,of%20Melbourne%E2%80%99s%20campus%E2%80%9D.">reported in February</a> that the university previously petitioned the Department of Defence to “consider greater connectivity” between the proposed Fishermans Bend campus and the Defence Department’s specialist Defence Science and Technology Group, which is also located in the suburb. 
“The University claims to be on about the big social challenges and trying to make the world better”, Tilman Ruff, an honorary associate professor and a founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/the-university-of-melbournes-new-campus-has-students-and-academics-seething/news-story/ed698e07f91089b4defaa5bbcdba8fff">told news.com.au earlier this month</a>.
“It’s hard to see how getting in bed with war profiteers and particularly makers of now illegal weapons of mass destruction fits with trying to do good in the world for the betterment of humanity.”
Boeing manufactures and sells F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters to the Israeli Air Force. BAE Systems, another of the world’s largest defence contractors, is a key supplier to the F-35 fighter jet program. 
Documents obtained from the university under Freedom of Information reveal that, after a student protest against a forum hosted by Boeing at the Parkville campus in 2024, the university reprimanded students speaking out against war crimes while reassuring the company of the university’s solid commitment to collaboration at Fishermans Bend.
The “weapons campus” aligns with a broader Victorian government initiative to lure more arms manufacturers and military contractors to the area. Melbourne University will provide space and materials for companies to improve their weapons and hardware. It will also funnel engineering students into the war industries. The campus will serve as the brains behind the bombs. 
The university is open about its intent to develop “leading-edge defence technologies” and describes the campus as “a site for multinationals and SMEs to engage in the Defence ecosystem ... supported by our state-of-the-art materials fabrication laboratory, ocean simulation facilities and autonomous robotics testing sites”.
The university is also gushing about the opportunities presented by the federal government’s proposed acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. It is hard to miss the connection between its <a href="https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/november/university-of-melbourne-welcomes-student-places-to-support-nuclear-powered-submarines-student-pathways">positive statements about training nuclear scientists</a> and the Fishermans Bend campus’s intended defence research into “marine systems technologies” and “optimising the performance and security of submarine, ship and amphibious operations in the open ocean and coastal areas”.
Students for Palestine Unimelb opposes collaboration between the university and the military. We have collected signatures from more than 1,000 students for a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DMpBwh5zmEC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">special general meeting for Palestine</a>, organised by the student union. If four hundred students attend, the meeting’s decisions will be binding on the union. If a mass meeting votes in favour of all motions, the union will campaign against the construction of Fishermans Bend, against all university ties to weapons companies, against the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/melbourne-university-expels-palestine-solidarity-activists">repression of student activism</a> and to organise a <a href="https://freedomflotilla.org/">fundraiser for the next Freedom Flotilla</a> sailing to break Israel’s blockade and bring aid to Gaza.

Emma Dynes

Students campaign against Melbourne University’s ‘weapons campus’

Dean: “We have received an anonymous complaint about your teaching related to Palestine.”
Teacher: “What specifically about my teaching?”
Dean: “I can’t say specifically, because that could breach the student’s anonymity.”
Teacher: “How can I respond to the accusation unless I know what it was I said that was the problem?”
Dean: “I can say only in general terms that there were several examples. That you were not presenting all sides of the debate.”
Teacher: “Can I know whether it was one of my students who complained?”
Dean: “No. And you cannot tell anyone of the existence or nature of this complaint.”
This conversation occurred at an Australian university. We know about it only because it was described in a confidential submission to the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine. In all likelihood, similar conversations have been happening behind closed doors in deans’ offices at campuses all over the country. 
University staff and students are being subjected to spurious complaints and opaque disciplinary procedures for expressing support for Palestine. They are being accused of prejudice—or worse, of antisemitism—for speaking against a genocide. In many cases, those students and staff aren’t even allowed to speak publicly about their experience. 
The widespread censorship of pro-Palestine speech on Australian university campuses was what motivated a group of students in Students for Palestine to establish a People’s Inquiry. Inspired by the Russell Tribunal of the 1960s, which assembled prominent figures to investigate US war crimes in Vietnam, the People’s Inquiry brought together members and representatives of the National Union of Students, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, the Jewish Council of Australia, as well as Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and human rights activists and academics. The aim was to shine a light on the alarming situation unfolding on university campuses. 
After the People’s Inquiry was launched, we received more than 150 submissions from twenty universities across Australia, an indication of the systematic nature of censorship when it comes to Palestine. The submissions detailed instances of repression, intimidation, silencing and punishment of university staff and students expressing support for Palestine and opposition to Israel’s genocide.
A small selection of the submissions formed the basis for the inquiry’s preliminary report, “Don’t talk about Palestine: it’s a career killer”. The title was taken from one of those submissions. In it, the submitter said they had received that advice from the director of a political research centre based at the University of Queensland. 
Following the preliminary report’s publication, the People’s Inquiry held two days of public hearings, one at the University of Sydney and one at the University of Melbourne, inviting university students and staff to share their stories. 
Before they were allowed to proceed, People’s Inquiry organisers at the University of Sydney were required by management to read out a statement assuring the audience that the university was committed to “freedom of speech and academic freedom as foundations to a vibrant democracy and our pursuit of knowledge”. The university was trying to cover its backside. But platitudes about free speech and “vibrant” democracies rang hollow in a room full of people who had come to listen to and share stories of censorship and arbitrary discipline. The irony appears lost on Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott, who didn’t accept an invitation to appear at the hearing. 
At the University of Melbourne, a photographer with the Australian Associated Press was initially prevented by security from entering the room where the hearing was taking place, but he was eventually let in. Maybe it was the act of an overzealous guard, but “Journalist denied access to free speech inquiry” would not have been a good headline for the university in any case.
The public hearings shed further light on the regime of censorship on university campuses. The panel heard from National Tertiary Education Union branch committee members who revealed that two staff members had been sacked from the University of Melbourne for speaking about Palestine. A medical student related that he was refused permission to organise an information stall on the situation in Gaza at the annual medical students’ conference.
There are high-profile cases of university repression of pro-Palestine speech, such as the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-university-vowed-not-to-spy-on-students-now-it-s-using-tracking-data-to-punish-them-20240704-p5jr3y.html">tracking of pro-Palestine students</a> through the wi-fi at the University of Melbourne. There’s the case of the international student at the University of Sydney who faced the <a href="https://honisoit.com/2025/03/usyd-threatens-transgender-student-with-deportation-after-violating-the-cap/">potential cancellation of her student visa and deportation</a> for writing pro-Palestine messages on a whiteboard.
Then there are the cases of repression and censorship that don’t make the headlines: the private meetings with management and the veiled threats couched in the language of “safety” or “wellbeing”. Many instances have been reported to the People’s Inquiry, but there are likely many more.
While we should not encourage university management to take a more active role in policing speech and political opinions on campuses, it is remarkable that supporters of Israel seem to have faced no consequences for cheering on a genocidal regime that is using starvation to decimate Gaza’s civilian population. At Monash University, Israel supporters <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/universities-crack-down-on-palestine-solidarity">repeatedly harassed and assaulted</a> pro-Palestine students at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and faced no consequences.
Students and staff speaking and protesting in support of Palestine are often accused by supporters of Israel of spreading hatred and division. Yet when Mark Leibler, a member of the University of Melbourne’s University Council, <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/02/jaccuse-the-jew-who-accuses-his-fellow-jews-of-being-antisemites/">in a social media post</a> described anti-Zionist Jews as “repulsive and revolting human beings” whose family members murdered by the Nazis would “undoubtedly be turning in their graves”, the university defended him on the grounds that the remark was made “in his personal capacity” and not as a university representative. Perhaps if students clarify that we oppose genocide in our “personal capacity” rather than as university students, we might be let off the hook? Somehow, I doubt it.
Why is this happening?
Universities often cultivate a self-image as institutions of free inquiry where challenging and controversial ideas are debated on their merits. In reality, universities serve power. Where it does exist, space for genuine political dissent has been carved out on the campuses despite university managers rather than because of them.
The higher education sector caters to modern capitalist economies’ ideological and technical needs. Universities are enormous workplaces: highly paid executives sit at the top and determine the day-to-day life of thousands of professional and academic staff. Each university competes with its peers in a global education market, vying for lucrative international student enrolments.
Reflective of their deep integration with and dependence on governments, universities frame their purpose in terms of the “national interest”. A <a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-federal-election-statement-Universities-matter-to-Australias-future.pdf">statement published by Universities Australia</a> in the lead-up to the 2025 federal election described universities as “vital national assets” that “underpin our nation’s prosperity” and strengthen our “international competitiveness”. 
Let’s remind ourselves what “national interest” really means. It means shielding Australia’s allies from attack or criticism, even (or especially) when that ally is committing crimes against humanity.
The national interest means spending upwards of $368 billion to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines—a sum that could build more than a million new public housing units. In a media release from November 2023, Universities Australia again spelled it out: “The planning, construction, operation and maintenance of our nuclear-powered submarines will not be possible without the skilled workers our unis educate or the research they undertake”.
As great-power conflict returns to the centre of world politics, Australian universities are giddy about the research and funding opportunities being presented. The University of Melbourne, for example, is spending $2 billion on a new campus at Fishermans Bend that will host partnerships with major weapons manufacturers.
Little wonder that the universities react with hostility to the pro-Palestine movement. Our movement wants to disrupt business as usual. We call out the crimes of a key Western ally in the Middle East and our own government’s complicity. We oppose the booming military-industrial complex. 
The problem for university managers is that students have been at the forefront of this movement. Students, many staff and thousands of others have refused to be silenced and browbeaten. We have rejected the lies of the people in power. We have camped, petitioned, occupied, rallied, assembled and protested for Palestine. 
In response, campuses have become the centre of attacks on free speech and political organising. Labor-appointed Special Envoy Jillian Segal paid particular attention to the universities in her “Plan to Combat Antisemitism”, which is, in reality, a plan to silence criticism of Israel. She wants universities to crack down even harder on pro-Palestine action and thought, and her plan proposes cutting funding from universities that don’t.
The repression playing out on campuses is serious. But it is possible to push back. Universities are susceptible to pressure. Defending the indefensible crimes of the Israeli state demands an authoritarian logic, but universities are also under pressure at least to appear to support open academic inquiry. Resistance from students and staff can beat back the attacks. The People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine aims to give a voice to those who have been silenced and to expose the universities’ chilling attacks against those who stand for justice in Palestine.
James McVicar is a panellist on the People’s Inquiry and the education officer for the National Union of Students.

People’s Inquiry exposes university censorship on Palestine

Even before vice-chancellors started <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/australian-universities-free-speech-right-to-protest/105164636?utm_campaign=abc_religion_fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR5PnBd0b7_RLoBzYiWAwBHbdJrEtIP-aAfolH8RTWzk3qFht8aDmd3KU1C6TA_aem_dhGiVX7WxtZwQWBgpTDeww">savagely limiting</a> what students and staff could say, studying or working at a university was nothing like the romantic notion of life in the “ivory tower”.
There are myths that universities are places to pursue knowledge for the joy of it, where students can learn how to help others and make the world a better place, while on the path to great jobs.
The reality is quite different. Unfortunately, students have minimal say about the content of inflexible courses. Progress through units and degrees depends on jumping through assessment hoops, as universities continue the “hidden curriculum” of the school system, which is at least as important as the overt curriculum. The hidden curriculum teaches students that success, measured in marks (a proxy for dollars), depends on doing what you’re told and not challenging what teachers say—excellent training for dictatorial workplaces.
Universities have increasingly geared their offerings to the needs of business and governments, and their own profitability. That does not include learning how the wellbeing of most of the world’s population requires radical social changes, let alone how to make revolution.
Courses—and even whole departments—have been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-05/university-of-wollongong-cuts-academic-jobs-international-cap/104560250">axed</a>
because they don’t satisfy those needs or bring in sufficient money. The jobs that most university graduates go into are overwhelmingly white-collar, working-class positions, in which employees, like other workers, have very limited or no control over what they do. Such jobs are subject to the vagaries of the labour market, capitalism’s boom-bust cycles and governments’ whims.
Unis are increasingly just glorified high schools. Students are sausages in its digestive tract, chewed up, dissolved in acid and shat out at the end with a degree, while the funding they bring is sucked out into the universities’ profits.
Outside the ranks of management, the situation of the roughly two-thirds of <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/higher-education-statistics/staff-data/selected-higher-education-statistics-2024-staff-data/key-findings-2024-higher-education-staff-statistics">university employees</a> who are not academics is equally gloomy. They are blue- and white-collar workers subjected to inadequate pay, attacks on their working conditions and frequent restructures. 
What about academics? Such jobs appear to offer scope to read and write about things you’re interested in, to tell others about those things, and lots of autonomy. The jobs are rewards for having a big brain and a way to get a public profile (for your big brain). And the jobs have “tenure”—they are secure—and you get to work in your own office.
The academic life is very different. The workloads of most academics today are punishing. Time to conduct and write up research is restricted. Career progress, and even keeping your job, depends on publishing in prestigious—that is conservative—journals. There’s pressure to do research that is “outside funded”, overwhelmingly by businesses or governments and according to their priorities.
Over the past twenty years, university bosses have dramatically tightened their control over academics’ research and teaching. Courses must go through time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, through which managers shape content and assessment methods and can even veto them. Anyone involved in teaching can tell you that marking is a horrible aspect of the job, humiliating for the marker and the markee. Teachers and students alike are subject to stressful time pressures. Most students are inadequately prepared for university. A teacher reading an essay whose first two sentences are clear and grammatical will think, “Wow! This should be much better than most of the others”.
To get an academic job, you must jump through many educational hoops and therefore go through a very sustained hidden curriculum: at school and in undergraduate and postgraduate study. Then, you must anticipate what the people who interview you want. Interview panels are dominated by universities’ most senior members, who are managers.
This promotes the “big brain syndrome”: the idea that your own unique talents are the key to your wellbeing at work and career advancement. That’s why academics tend to be poor unionists, compared with other university employees. They are even more prone than most workers to the illusion that their individual merit rather than collective action is the most important route to improve pay and conditions.
The “big brain syndrome” also affects some academic unionists who think of themselves as left wing, leading them to believe that sophisticated tactics in dealing with university bosses (and top union officials) can substitute for the unglamorous effort of detailed workplace organising or the crudity of strike action.
A public profile for you and your research? Only if the mainstream media are interested.
As for job security, most academic jobs are now casual, low paid and not paid for all hours actually worked. As a casual, you don’t even get the cubbyhole individual office that is increasingly standard for other academics.
Even continuing academic jobs are no more secure than continuing jobs anywhere else. Tenure is ancient history.
Initially, thanks to a disastrous policy of the National Tertiary Education Union, universities created “teaching-focussed” jobs, which allow no or laughably little time for research. Yet career progression is very difficult without an extensive publishing record. There are more and more of these jobs.
Academics who don’t supervise anyone or for whom that is a very small part of their duties (the majority) are just workers, gut flora in universities’ digestive tracts.
Why is there such a gap between the myths and realities of university life?
Universities have always been institutions that help to maintain, defend and develop systems of class rule. Initially, they provided administrators, clergy and lawyers who maintained the feudal order. Those graduates justified the hierarchy of feudalism as divinely ordained or in accord with “natural law” or assisted its smooth operation by overseeing its legal system and state.
With the rise of capitalism, through to the Second World War, universities remained elite institutions, whose graduates generally went on to be managers in business and government, increasingly with scientific and engineering expertise, as well as middle class professionals, especially lawyers and doctors.
Universities became mass institutions after the war. Today, most people who get degrees become skilled workers who can generally be relied on to do what they’re told.
The spread and production of ideas that serve capitalist interests are still significant university functions. Thomas Müntzer was a priest in the sixteenth century who took the side of peasants and artisans in the massive uprising against the old feudal order in Germany, known as the “Peasants’ War”. His observation in July 1524 is still a pretty good description of an aspect of universities’ ideological roles today: 
“[In biblical times] clever soothsayers and interpreters of dreams ... said only what the lords wanted to hear, just as our academic scribblers do nowadays, for they have a taste for the choicest morsels at court.”
Contemporary lords of capital don’t want to hear only tried and trusted apologies for the way things are, but also more up-to-date variations and even innovations around that fundamental theme. When an academic or journalist hits the right note, they can count on politicians, spokesthings for the state or business and the mass media to amplify it and boost their career. Think of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who promotes far-right ideas, including racism and sexism.
University research generates genuine insights into how people behave, societies function and the nature of the material world: science. These can improve our lives and understanding of reality.
But the lens of class politics tends to affect all aspects of the production of ideas, including sciences. It shapes universities as workplaces and biases research priorities. Scientific advances can often be used by corporations and state institutions to improve their control and manipulations of consumers, workers and citizens. They can help businesses develop new products or production processes that improve profitability, <a href="https://www.techtransfer.org.au/news-item/17346/finalists-announced-for-the-2024-kca-awards">from</a>
controlling fires to lithium refining, disinfection technologies to “<a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/03/31/sydney-spinout-deteqt-secures-backing-for-diamond-on-silicon-sen.html">quantum sensing</a>”.
The creation of new ideas depends on academics having some autonomy, not just parroting dogmas. The degree of this autonomy can vary dramatically. In some cases, it has even allowed Marxists to get jobs in social sciences or arts. But the structures of universities and career paths in them mean that academics often produce ideas and analyses without attention to the contexts of the phenomena they are trying to grasp. There is a wonderful word in German for this: Fachidiotismus. Literally it means the idiocy of academic disciplines: knowing more and more about less and less.
Universities are bureaucratic organisations like corporations or public service agencies. As capitalist enterprises, universities are there to make profits for themselves and their <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/highest-university-executive-pay-packets-revealed-as-crackdown-looms-20250101-p5l1i1.html">top managers</a>. They make profits by producing workers and developing ideas that are useful for the state and other capitalists, and are fundamentally committed to the maintenance of capitalism.
Although universities make profits through educating workers and developing ideas that are useful to the state and other capitals, and are fundamentally committed to the maintenance of capitalism, their senior managers can act in ways that contradict interests of the capitalist class as a whole. The dumbing down of courses over recent decades, and the consequent decline in the average abilities of graduates, is an example. But such conflicts, in which universities pursue their own sectoral interests, do not make them different from any other section of capital.
In some places, the student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s led to some reforms that included students and non-professorial staff in the decision-making processes of the whole university, faculties, schools and departments, to a limited extent. Since then, managers, encouraged by politicians and businesspeople, have either eliminated this representation or rendered it purely tokenistic. Appointed managers have replaced elected heads of departments or schools and deans of faculties. The powers of appointed top managers have increased.
Most members of university councils or senates—their boards of directors—are appointed by governments or existing members and are thoroughly reliable servants of capitalist interests.
Although there are profound myths about the nature of universities, they can be sites of resistance against capitalism. That’s true of all workplaces but there’s an additional element that leads to this possibility in universities.
The main raw material that goes into its production process is students. They come to universities with an optimism about the world that hasn’t been worn down by years of wage labour, and they generally have more free time to engage in political activity than people with full-time jobs and families. They have more scope to explore ideas and engage in political activity, if they want to.
While socialists regard the working class as the only force that can bring down capitalism and create a new society, winning more people to active socialist politics is important, especially workers but also workers-in-the-making at schools and universities.
Rick Kuhn worked in academic jobs for 28 years and is a life member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

Rick Kuhn

Life in the cardboard tower: the university experience today

I have been suspended from my high school for challenging a federal minister about his continued support for Israel and the genocide in Palestine.
I am a year 11 student at Coburg High in Melbourne, and Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil visited our school this week. When I saw him on my way to class, I asked him about the government’s continued support for the Israeli government as it carries out genocide. As I did so, staff members told me that “there is a time and a place” for such questions.
Khalil nevertheless stopped for a moment to defend himself. He went on about how much he cares for the Palestinians. His evidence for this was that his father was in the Egyptian army, he is an immigrant, has been to Palestine and has “spoken with Penny Wong on many occasions”.
How is any of that relevant?
As I continued asking questions, Khalil began to walk away. A year-12 student joined me, and we chanted as Kahlil entered the school building: “Free Palestine, Peter!” Another student then joined us in this short protest.
My classmates and I have a history of protesting for Palestine. A contingent of us left school to join the School Strikes for Palestine and the demonstration against the Land Forces arms expo in Melbourne. While we were discouraged from attending, we were not disciplined for doing so.
On this occasion, our vice principal stopped us and told us not to yell at Khalil, who was the school’s guest. But we wanted to make it abundantly clear that we didn’t view him as a “guest”. Kahlil walked past us again, so we continued to chant “Free Palestine!” I also shouted: “Fucking scum!”
After this, I was barred from returning to class. I spent an hour with the vice principal, who told me what I had done was wrong and that I should have had “a civilised conversation” rather than shouting abuse.
But if what my classmates and I did was “uncivilised”, what do you call the genocide in Gaza that Khalil and Labor have supported?
Two days later, I was told I could do “community service” to avoid multiple days of suspension. But I believe that protesting for Gaza and holding politicians to account are the best services I can perform for my community.
Maybe Peter Khalil should be doing some global community service by ending Australia’s ties with apartheid Israel.
Khalil later posted on his social media: “On Monday I answered questions from some really politically passionate year 10 students ... We discussed youth health issues ...” Actually, he completely avoided talking about the health of Gaza’s children, who have been systematically bombed and starved.
I have been told that my suspension is due to my yelling at a school guest. But that guest is a federal government minister who has sat by and done nothing as Israel has destroyed every school and university in Gaza. I felt obliged to stand up and shout when he decided to parade himself through our school grounds.
Many students and staff have since expressed support for my actions. Although I have been suspended for doing what was right and being on the right side of history, this will not stop our fight for a free Palestine—because none of us is free until Palestine is free.
----------
Editor’s note: This article was resubmitted with amendments on 12 July. The original version did not include a reference to the author publicly calling Peter Khalil “fucking scum”. The editors regret that this information was not contained in the original piece and acknowledge that it is relevant context to the disciplinary case against Callum. 
However, we also congratulate Callum for forcefully confronting Peter Khalil and think his actions are politically defensible—indeed, justifiable. The political atmosphere in 2025 has been defined by a total failure on the part of the “adults in the room”—particularly politicians and journalists with national platforms—to adequately respond to what is arguably the moral question of our time: the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of its population by a key international ally of the Australian government. 
Instead, we have witnessed sickening displays of obsequiousness and deference by Australian politicians to US President Donald Trump and Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The world would be a better place if there were fewer Peter Khalils and more Callum Bells—people prepared to throw caution to the wind and just fight for what’s right.

Callum Bell

Suspended for confronting Peter Khalil

The internet adage “pics or it didn’t happen” refers to the fact that, since about 2010, almost nothing important has happened in a public space without someone pulling out their phone and taking a photo or video of it. 
And yet, if we are to believe a SafeWork NSW report, details of which were published by the Australian, pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University managed to burst into lecture halls chanting antisemitic slogans and carrying banners that read “Jews not allowed”, without a single photo or video of these alleged incidents in existence. 
Similarly, no-one thought to snap a pic and post about the time when, according to the report, Sydney University student activists “put up a billboard with all the names of Hamas terrorists on it” at a protest.
The report also claims that the eight-week Gaza solidarity encampment, which began last May, created “a workplace of fear, anxiousness and a fear of retribution towards Jewish workers and students because they were Jewish people”. Multiple reports and investigations into the encampment, including this one, have failed to provide any evidence of this. But if you repeat something often enough, it can start to seem true. 
The SafeWork NSW report is the result of an investigation instigated by a complaint from 23 staff and students claiming that Sydney University had breached its responsibility to provide a safe working environment for Jewish employees. SafeWork, the government agency tasked with regulating workplace health and safety, concluded based on interviews with the complainants and two site visits that the university “failed to take reasonable actions to manage, reduce, and eliminate active antisemitic conduct on campus”. 
But the report contains no credible evidence of antisemitic activism linked to the Palestine solidarity campaign. The main examples from the report, which the media have used to try to slander pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University, fail to provide this. Some are clearly fabricated, as in the above examples, which have not been corroborated with any evidence. Others are stock standard features of the campaign to support Palestine: posters and flyers advertising rallies and campus meetings, “Gaza will be free” tagged in the campus graffiti tunnel and the slogan “Palestine will be free” being chanted at a campus protest. There is not a shred of antisemitism in any of this.
That these gestures of staff and student support for the Palestinians form the basis for “psychosocial harm” to employees at Sydney University is a politically charged false assertion. 
In putting together this report, SafeWork makes a mockery of the idea of workplace health and safety. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the agency is known for taking a soft touch approach to bosses who endanger their employees’ lives at work. In 2022, SafeWork NSW was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/workplace-safety-scandal-auditor-general-launches-six-month-investigation-into-failings-20221013-p5bphh.html">investigated</a> over allegations that workers had experienced injury and even death on sites where inspectors failed to follow up complaints adequately due to political interference.
While serious infringements of workplace health and safety have gone unpunished, and the number of workers fatally injured at work continues to <a href="https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/media-centre/news/key-work-health-and-safety-statistics-2024">rise</a>, the government agency tasked with regulating this is instead being misused as a weapon to come after pro-Palestine activism on university campuses. 
On this front, SafeWork is only following the lead of many other institutions that have tried to stifle Palestine solidarity under the guise of combating antisemitism. 
State Labor Premier Chris Minns spent months linking a “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/the-great-antisemitism-con-job">great tsunami of high-profile antisemitic attacks</a>“ to weekly pro-Palestine street marches in Sydney, passing repressive anti-protest laws on the back of these claims. The NSW Police later revealed that these incidents had been almost entirely the work of petty criminals, linked to the same common source as the Dural caravan hoax. 
Universities have also used “concern for antisemitism” as justification to introduce anti-protest policies and procedures. Indeed, despite what the SafeWork report alleges, Sydney University has been leading the charge on quashing pro-Palestine activism. Over the last year, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has pushed through multiple policies designed to crack down on student and staff rights to protest and express political dissent. The new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/free-speech-under-attack-at-sydney-university">Campus Access Policy</a> bans forms of protest that have been part of university life since the campaign against the Vietnam War, while policies introduced just this month impose punitive rules regarding posters on campus and total bans on students making lecture announcements before their classes. 
As Israel intensifies the genocide in Gaza and the war crimes pile up, the pro-Israel camp continues to find new ways to slander and silence the activists standing up for justice. But we won’t stop campaigning for Palestine.
Shovan Bhattarai is the vice-president of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council and a coordinator of the campus Students for Palestine collective

Shovan Bhattarai

SafeWork NSW’s report on antisemitism at Sydney University is fake news

The University of Melbourne has expelled two student activists and indefinitely suspended two more for a 2024 occupation of the office of university academic and pro-Israel campaigner Steven Prawer. The expulsions follow a pattern of management attacks on Palestine solidarity activism. 
Since 3 March, the administration has banned indoor protests, those at building entrances and any that are “unreasonably disruptive”. The university previously tried to intimidate nineteen students by issuing misconduct notices after the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last year. When students camped out in the Arts West building to demand divestment from Israel and arms manufacturers, the university secretly spied on their movements via the Wi-Fi system. 
Management also threatened to defund the student union if it paid Palestinian speakers at a forum raising awareness about conditions in the West Bank. As well, in 2022, the university condemned the union for adopting a pro-Palestine and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions position. 
To legitimise its crackdown on campus free speech and activism, the administration has cynically weaponised the issue of antisemitism. In 2023, the university adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism. The definition is hotly contested because it includes, as an example of antisemitism, “criticism of the state of Israel”. 
Like the government and media, the university deliberately conflates support for Palestine and an end to the war in Gaza with hatred of Jewish people. There are several anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, that vocally oppose Israel’s war in Gaza. Indeed, JVP’s slogan at demonstrations is “not in our name”; a pointed rejection of the idea that Israel acts in the interests of Jewish people when it starves and massacres Palestinians. 
Recently, the university published an “Anti-Racism Action Plan”, supposedly to combat antisemitism on campus. Twelve complaints of antisemitism were lodged with the university, it says, “concentrated in Semester 1 2024 ... during the period of the encampment and occupation [and] largely related to posters, slogans and stickers which could not be attributed to a specific person”. 
The only evidence provided of antisemitism is pro-Palestine slogans and protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Under the guise of fighting racism, the university has punitively targeted anti-war and anti-genocide student campaigners. 
Universities are attacking freedom of speech and anti-war protesters in part because they are a key pillar of defence research in Australia. The University of Melbourne alone collaborates with thirteen weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems. 
It aims to cement its place in weapons research by establishing a <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships">weapons research hub at the new Fisherman’s Bend campu</a>s, currently under construction in Port Melbourne. The university will partner with Boeing, Siemens, and the Australian Department of Defence. The administration has already spent $2 billion on the project and is attempting to establish more contracts with other weapons companies. 
The decision to discipline students coincides with the devastating escalation in Israel’s war. Israel is systematically starving Gazans. In the past week, a US “aid” organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has repeatedly gunned down Palestinians desperately seeking food at distribution sites. Israeli politicians boast openly of making the Gaza Strip so unliveable that Palestinians will “voluntarily” leave. It’s open ethnic cleansing. And at this moment, the university administration has come out stridently on Israel’s side. 
The expulsions set a dangerous precedent for free speech and the right to protest on campus. But they can be challenged. Last year, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-deakin-university-tried-to-trample-on-students-rights-and-failed">a Deakin student was suspended</a> for her involvement in the Deakin Gaza Encampment, but was reinstated on appeal. Similarly, <a href="https://honisoit.com/2024/09/pro-palestinian-anu-student-wins-expulsion-appeal/">an ANU student won their expulsion appeal</a> after being disciplined. Those cases show that it’s possible to challenge university discipline and win civil liberties on campuses. The movement won’t be cowed or intimidated by those trying to silence us.

Melbourne University expels Palestine solidarity activists

Reconciliation Day in Canberra last year was ice cold, the air thick with fog. For 232 days, Israel had been indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza. For 28 days, hundreds of students and staff had maintained a protest encampment on Kambri lawns, the heart of the Australian National University campus, demanding that the administration cut ties with Israel and condemn the genocide. ANU managers had spent the month slandering the protest and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-16/act-palestine-anu-gaza-encampment-members-ordered-to-vacate/103858184">suspending student activists</a> involved in the encampment. 
It was Monday morning, 27 May; the university bosses finally decided that they could no longer tolerate the encampment in such a prominent position. Their official justification was that we were blocking a fire evacuation point, and the backup evacuation point just would not do. In truth, they wanted the protest out of sight. 
Dozens of security guards and a handful of police officers arrived to serve the students with an evacuation notice. Those awakened by this order initially complied. Ambushed and outnumbered at 7am, they began dismantling the tents. The media soon arrived to witness the supervised self-destruction. 
Yet, as the morning fog cleared and the sun came out, a handful of students sat down in defiance and began chanting: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” More spontaneously joined, sitting around the camping gear, which had now been packed down, linking arms and chanting. The circle of hi-vis security guards retreated as supporters surged closer to the first movers and joined in the chanting. 
More police arrived. Blue and white chequered vans, cars and motorbikes pulled up across the creek to establish a “command centre” about a hundred metres away. Security was no longer fit for the task, so ANU had called in the cavalry. 
Meanwhile, the students had now convened a meeting. Did we want to stare down the police, risking arrest, to defend the camp? After a brief discussion, we took a vote. The decision was close to unanimous—we would not move. 
Some volunteers sifted through the crowd to write the phone number of a supportive lawyer on the arms of everyone willing to get arrested. Those who preferred not to face arrest stepped off the grass and formed a human chain around the camp. About a hundred sat ready to be dragged off in a divvy van, and a few hundred more stood with their arms linked in an unbroken chain around the perimeter. People with megaphones were stationed throughout the picket line, leading songs and chants to keep spirits high. 
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water
We shall not be moved.
But after several hours, the ultimatum finally came. Two of us were given the job of police liaisons. We walked to their “command centre” next to the creek and were told that the university was prepared to offer a second location for the camp, a few hundred metres up the path. If we refused to move there by 3pm, we would be arrested. We went back to the camp and relayed what the officer had said. We took another vote. “Knowing what we just told you, who is committed to staying?” Everyone cheered. I passed their message back to the officer. 
The deadline came and went. We kept checking our watches. Eventually, at 4pm or so, an officer marched to a spot across from the camp and placed a small speaker on the ground to announce an official directive: that everyone must vacate Kambri lawns by 11am Tuesday or face arrest. 
We had forced the police to back down—for now. Every cop van, car and bike left the campus, and we were left to debrief. We fought the law and, for a moment, we won. 
Later, we heard that the university had issued a directive to all students to avoid the Kambri precinct the following day, and that businesses in the precinct were instructed to shut down in preparation for a major police operation. But we also heard from some unionists that workers on ANU construction sites were organising to walk off the job in solidarity with us. 
We put a call out to every community group we could think of to mobilise the next day and support us against mass arrests. The university managers were preparing to escalate the situation—but we had won once, and the mood was that we could win again. 
Yet, after hours of debate, several votes and a thinning out of people in the camp, the scared and tired few who remained at around midnight finally voted to accept the university’s directive. The anticipated showdown never came. Construction workers still walked off the job. Students, community members and reporters still showed up the next day in expectation. But the police didn’t need to return—they scored their victory through intimidation. 
This wasn’t the end, however. The camp continued in its new location for 83 more days. By the end of the year, there had been several general meetings, countless rallies, a referendum and one of the longest campus protest encampments in the country—all demanding divestment from Israel and weapons companies supplying the Israeli military. 
Under pressure, the university reversed the suspensions and expulsions of student activists and <a href="https://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-to-divest-from-controversial-weapons-manufacturers-but-questions-remain/">promised to divest</a> from “controversial weapons companies”. Exactly which companies were “controversial” was never clarified, and no updates have been provided since that promise was made. They have not yet condemned the genocide in Gaza or cut ties with Israel.
The fight for a free Palestine continues, but the strength of our side is nourished by small acts of defiance and partial victories like the one we scored last year on Kambri lawns.

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La Trobe staff and students speak out against university censorship

Students to hold nationwide vote on Gaza

Students campaign against Melbourne University’s ‘weapons campus’

People’s Inquiry exposes university censorship on Palestine

Life in the cardboard tower: the university experience today

Suspended for confronting Peter Khalil

SafeWork NSW’s report on antisemitism at Sydney University is fake news

Melbourne University expels Palestine solidarity activists

When Palestine solidarity protesters defied police at the ANU

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