In response to a Senate inquiry into supposed antisemitism on Australian university campuses, the Group of Eight (Go8) vice-chancellors representing the Australian National University, Sydney, Melbourne, Monash, UWA, UNSW, Queensland and Adelaide have produced a definition of antisemitism which is to be enforced on all their respective students and staff.
In strict conformity, the other 31 universities then agreed to adopt this definition. No debate, no alternative views?
The Go8 defines antisemitism as “discrimination prejudice, harassment, exclusion, vilification, intimidation or violence that impedes Jews”.
To identify this interpretation as a means of protecting Israel from undue criticism, the vice-chancellors add their all encompassing view — who could possibly disagree with them? — that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes or stereotypes of Jewish people, a judgment they say is a response to pressure from the Senate inquiry into “rancorous protests about the Gaza war”.
“Rancorous?” Apart from that adjective, the deliberations of these high status individuals are notable for omitting any reference to the International Criminal Court’s judgment about a plausible genocide in Palestine, let alone to Australia’s complicity in death and destruction in Gaza and on the West Bank, the slaughter of 50,000 Palestinians 70% of them women and children, serious injuries to 100,000 others, the murder of doctors, nurses, cleaners, ambulance drivers and journalists, plus the destruction of all educational institutions, all hospitals and related healthcare facilities.
What were these vice-chancellors thinking? It was Israeli/US depravity and brutality which motivated students of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Jewish students, to march, camp and protest. Were these protests in support of human rights or actions of antisemites?
As an expression of respect for universal human rights, even for principles of common decency, the vice-chancellors might have thanked the students and supported their protests. Instead, influenced by a lobby which aims to treat Israel as above the law, they fell for the claim that there’s a social cohesion issue in Australia and it’s called antisemitism.
Evidence presented to the vice-chancellors might have been substantial, might even justify the compliance of every university, hence the questions: who did the Go8 consult, whose views may have influenced their judgments?
In January 2025, Liberal MP Julian Leeser’s call for laws to “clamp down on antisemitism” was an endorsement of his colleague Senator Sarah Henderson’s claim that antisemitism on campuses had reached “unprecedented levels”. The official envoy for antisemitism, former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Jillian Segal, chimed in. She had already pressured all universities to adopt the controversial definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association. The Go8 are said to have worked closely with Segal.
A one-eyed, one-sided perspective grew. The Zionist Federation of Australia, supported by the Australia Union of Jewish Students, provided figures to demonstrate the extent of antisemitism on campuses. Working for Michael West Media, historian researcher Emma Thomas records that in August 2024, in conclusions which the ZFA said were “academically rigorous and independently sourced”, two-thirds of Jewish university students were said to have experienced antisemitism. From 3330 invitations sent to a list of Jewish students provided by the AUJS, only 563 (17%) responded and of those, 360 (64%) did report experiencing antisemitism.
The ZFA conceded that respondents to their survey represented only 7% of Australian Jewish students. Thomas shows that “Universities relied on fudged figures”. She concluded, “approximately 94.2% of Jewish students did not report experiencing antisemitism on Australian university campuses”.
Given shrill media concern about antisemitism coupled to major political parties’ indifference to a continuing genocide, the Go8 vice-chancellors could have been carefully critical and should have displayed the academic rigour which supposedly characterises the work of universities, let alone the standards of their leaders. This did not happen. Were there no discordant voices? No exceptions to this search for a uniform view that antisemitism is rife and any undue criticism of a continuing genocide should be stifled?
It looks as though the dangerous process of institutionalisation occurred, as when people who live and work together complement one another’s views, lose independence of thought and attempt to speak with one voice. It is disconcerting, some would say disgraceful, that this process developed among academic leaders pressured to prevent further protests against the war in Gaza. Why have they acted in this way?
The impressive biographies of the Go8 vice-chancellors display why together they are members of an elite club, but one in which their deliberations are invisible, their wisdom apparently taken for granted. Phrases describing their achievements may explain why they became vice-chancellors, as in references to “Extensive experience in building relationships”, being “Distinguished academics and higher education leaders”, “Researchers… with extensive experience in government and corporate sectors”.
But none of those accolades say anything about the courage and critical thinking required to resist the political pressures to agree that antisemitism is rife in universities, that criticism of Israeli mayhem should be outlawed, hence the cowardly crafting of a one-sided definition of antisemitism which is now said to to be rigorously enforced. What has “enforcement” let alone punishment got to do with university standards, cultures and lives?
Instead of rigorous analysis and debate in Go8 deliberations, it looks as though political and media noise about antisemitism nurtured conformity. Academic leaders swallowed flimsy evidence and refused to stand up to bullies. They have not protected those principles of freedom to inquire, debate, speak and protest which have been life-preserving features of university life and culture. No more.
Enforcement in universities of a controversial view of antisemitism has been coupled to scant regard for human life in a Gaza war in which Australia has been complicit. This spells huge dangers for public life, in general, and for students, in particular. Glance only for a minute at the fascist-like suppression underway in New York’s Columbia University and across other US campuses.
Staff and students on Australian universities must resist, despite the Go8 imposition of a document which appears to satisfy a lobby with far too much influence on the way politicians and right-wing branches of the media think and act.
In their response to controversy about antisemitism, the vice-chancellors don’t even deserve a bare pass. They could have done so much better.
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.