A people’s tribunal has found that Australian universities restricted free speech and academic freedom on Palestine, even as vice chancellors apologised for not doing more to police protest.
Reports of university Vice Chancellors’ submissions to the Royal Commission on antisemitism stand in stark contrast to the findings of the Tribunal report Erasure in the Academy on pro-Palestine student and staff experiences of suppression on 21 university campuses.
‘The People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine’ – authored by James McVicar, Gill Boehringer, Linda Briskman and Patricia Fox – found substantial evidence that Australian universities restricted free speech and academic freedom on issues related to Palestine.
Testimonials from students and staff highlighted fear to speak about Palestine, and an underlying anti-Palestine, Islamophobic and anti-Arab racism. This Tribunal concluded that under pressure from politicians, the media and pro-Israel lobby groups, university administrators went to extraordinary lengths to shut down pro-Palestine activism.
A few days after the Tribunal’s publication, Vice Chancellors arrived in Canberra to explain to the Royal Commission their judgements about antisemitism on their campuses and how they had responded.
Who are we supposed to believe? Will the Royal Commission weigh the findings of the People’s Tribunal or be unduly impressed by the claims of university managers?
These claims were peppered with apologies that more could have been done to stifle any protest considered antisemitic, that student encampments protesting the slaughter in Gaza posed ‘psychosocial risks’ to Jewish students, that the means of complaining about pro-Palestine initiatives should have been improved and stricter disciplinary action taken by security staff who policed free speech, who attempted to remove those who appeared to be openly antisemitic, whatever that was supposed to mean.
The sight of Vice Chancellors apologising for allowing protests against unending Israeli violence and massive loss of life in Gaza displayed at best a skewed morality, at worst a cowardly compliance with the demands of a pro-Israel lobby that truth comes only from their views.
A year earlier, in appearance before Senator Sarah Henderson’s Inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses, Vice Chancellors had already been brow beaten into complying with the Senator’s views that campuses had become a hotbed of antisemitism.
The mismatch between the Tribunal findings and the reported statements from Vice Chancellors appear in managers’ apparent ignorance about life and death in Palestine, in bullying which has characterised cross examination of university presentations to the Royal Commission and in cowardice displayed in politicians’ and university leaders’ acceptance of the confusing and controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Apparently intimidated by the political and media claims that antisemitism was a major moral issue, the representatives of university management appeared to know little about a history of colonialism in Palestine and had not been sufficiently interested to find out for themselves, perhaps by having visited Gaza, the West Bank, met with Israeli peace activists or even learned from Ilan Pappe’s (2003) ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’ or his 2024 book ‘Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic.’
In consequence, ill-prepared, they were fair game for political and media bullies keen to impose the IHRA perspective that any criticism of Israeli policies must be anti-Semitic.
Meanwhile, slaughter continued in Gaza. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the US brokered ceasefire of October 2025. Did that matter?
At most universities, students from diverse backgrounds, including Jewish students had protested this massive inhumanity.
Vice Chancellors and their representatives might also have displayed compassion for Gazans being starved and bombed to death.
Instead, evidence from the Tribunal shows that in relation to legitimate pro-Palestine activities on campus, university authorities violated principles of free speech and academic freedom and seemed unaware of Jewish students and staff who insisted that they had never experienced harassment or discrimination.
The Tribunal says that even more disturbing was universities’ failure to acknowledge their engagement in partnerships with companies that supply component parts to the Israeli Defence Force for weapons used to massacre Palestinians.
The view that university authorities enabled antisemitism to flourish was apparent in submissions to the Royal Commission by the Australian Union of Jewish students and from the repertoire of Jeremy Leibler, President of the Zionist Federation of Australia.
The former claimed that the University of Sydney was ‘the worst place in the country to be a Jewish student.’ How did they know? Had they also unearthed a variety of views?
Leibler insisted that Mark Scott, Vice Chancellor of Sydney University, was not fit for the post, that he should resign and that events on the campus were “deeply shocking.” How did Leibler know?
Of course, he knew. His view should prevail. The existence of pro-Palestine encampments meant that antisemitism flourished. An alternative interpretation could be that Leibler had interviewed a wide cross section of students and made his judgement accordingly? Really?
The push to ensure public acceptance that antisemitism was widespread on campuses came not only from a Zionist lobby. The Tribunal shows that universities’ silencing of students had been ‘enabled and encouraged by politicians from both major parties and the mainstream media who have lied and misled the public in relation to genocide in Gaza and the nature of the Palestinian movement.’
Most Vice Chancellors accepted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and were reluctant to challenge let alone decry it.
Yet there were and are other definitions of ani-Semitism, ones which Gareth Evans on P&I says “would protect Jewish Australians without suppressing legitimate criticism of Israel.”
In an Australian Federal Court in July 2025, Justice Stewart ruled, “An ordinary reasonable listener would understand that criticism of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force and Zionism were not about Jewish people in general and not antisemitic.”
Nevertheless, students were threatened for using the word ‘genocide’, an amazing outcome when ethnic cleansing and slaughter in Gaza were obvious. It appears equally incredible that the phrases ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalise the intifada’ were banned.
Jewish US academic Peter Beinart contends, “It is simply a grave violation of people’s basic fundamental rights to say that you can’t use the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’.”
The significant 2021 Jerusalem Declaration on antisemitism recommends, ‘It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants between the river and the sea.’
The Tribunal Inquiry has shown how principles of free speech and academic freedom were violated when university managers bowed to the politicians’, mainstream media’s and a lobby’s view that antisemitism was rife on campuses.
By contrast, students’ protests against an ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, which the International Court of Justice called a plausible genocide, emerge as the one admirable feature of this controversy.
Those students should be thanked for their principles and for their courage.
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.