This week, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has been examining admissions from university administrators about their shortcomings in shielding Jewish students and faculty from the psychological strains linked to pro-Palestinian protests on campus grounds.
Testimony revealed a striking incident at the Australian National University, where a student was startlingly asked to produce death certificates for family members reportedly killed by Israeli forces.
As Mary Russell, the chief of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority, addressed the commission, she recounted numerous examples of academic staff failing to offer sensible support to students embroiled in the Israel-Palestine conflict’s fallout.
While Russell acknowledged the norm of requiring documentation for adjusting academic assessments, she emphasized the “profound differences” when the loss of family members is directly tied to violent acts by the Israeli Defense Force or Hamas.
She remarked on the glaring absence of trauma-informed, student-focused strategies, describing this deficiency as both significant and widespread.
Russell appeared on the final day of hearings into antisemitism and hate speech on university campuses with dozens of witnesses believing more could be done to protect staff and students.
Monash University professor David Slucki told the commission that universities had “pretty adequate” policies for protecting Jewish people on campuses, instead calling for broader conversations about university cultures.
“You don’t legislate your way out of social discord. We actually need to find a way to change the cultures in our institutions,” he said.
Slucki, who helped develop the Australian universities’ definition of anti-Jewish hatred, said it was important to remember that understandings of Zionism – and therefore definitions of antisemitism – varied based on interpretation of history.
Australian National University’s interim vice-chancellor Rebekah Brown apologised on Thursday that Jewish members did not feel safe as a long-running pro-Palestinian encampment was held at ANU in 2024.
However, staff and university leaders say they have had to grapple with the need for academic freedom of speech and that claims of antisemitism have diminished the right to protest.
Sydney University vice-chancellor Mark Scott said universities should be able to serve as “bastions of free speech” and that he has not bowed to pressure to ban pro-Palestinian protest slogans.
Universities and the higher education sector have been under the royal commission’s microscope since Monday as it attempts to investigate the prevalence of antisemitic racism in Australian society.
Universities accused of letting antisemitism flourish
The Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council has said university leadership in Australia has allowed antisemitism to flourish almost unchecked.
“The harrowing testimony of Jewish students and staff, together with the evidence of several university vice chancellors, has laid bare systematic failures of university leadership,” the council said in a statement.
“These hearings should be a watershed moment. Australian universities should finally accept responsibility and accountability for their failures and commit to the meaningful reforms.”
Josh Kirsh, CEO of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, told the commission on Tuesday that universities had “failed” to address underlying issues of antisemitism and that existing policies in place left students experiencing victimisation even more isolated.
Pro-Palestinian students defend the right to protest
Students for Palestine co-convener Yasmine Johnson, a Jewish woman who lost family in the Holocaust, defended the use of violent and non-violent protest to end Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
“I think it’s hard to believe that there would be a contention that slaves did not have the right to use violence when opposing slaveholders … that those people should have quietly and peacefully held up signs in order to do that,” she told the inquiry on Monday.
Her family background meant she had to “fight for justice”, she said, which she did by organising Sydney University’s 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment.
From Monday, the government will strengthen university governance standards, including a requirement that institutions adopt anti-racism standards with definitions on antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.