'We see what’s happening in the United States'

The University of Sydney’s Academic Board is in uproar, with members claiming the university’s administration has brought in a new institutional definition of antisemitism under false pretences that will be used to punish staff and students who criticise Israel.

On April 1, an edition of Staff News — a university-wide staff newsletter sent out by vice-chancellor Mark Scott’s office — stated that the new Universities Australia working definition of antisemitism “has been endorsed by the University’s Academic Board”.

There was only one problem: the Board had done no such thing.

The university’s Academic Board is a large body that “oversees all academic activities and matters at the University”. It includes vice-chancellors and deputy vice-chancellors, deans, heads of schools and faculties, elected staff and student representatives and many others. Besides formulating and reviewing guidelines and procedures that inform how the university’s academic policies are enacted and enforced, the Board also has a responsibility “to safeguard the academic freedom of the University”.

The UA working definition was presented to the Board in March by Professor Stephen Garton, an advisor to Scott, and Associate Professor David Slucki, director of Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. The proposal — sponsored by Scott and Board chair Professor Jane Hanrahan — was that the UA definition be added to the supplementary resources informing the University’s anti-racism statement.

The new definition, adopted unanimously by the 39 members of Universities Australia in February, states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic … when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel” and asserts that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

“Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic,” the working definition states.

Since the proposal put forward was only to “note” the addition of the UA working definition to the university’s anti-racism resources, no vote on the issue was held. However, the proposal was poorly received by many Board members, given the wider context of bad-faith accusations of antisemitism being weaponised to silence demonstrations of support for Palestinians on university campuses in Australia and other Western countries.

While the adoption of the UA definition by Australia’s 39 universities in February was welcomed by special envoy to combat antisemitism and former Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Jillian Segal, the Jewish Council of Australia called it “a dangerous and politicised definition of antisemitism” that “risks institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism”.

Weaponising “antisemitism” on university campuses to punish students and staff who express support for Palestinians has long been a goal of Zionist lobby groups. The Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016, commonly known as the “IHRA definition,” includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as examples of antisemitism alongside Holocaust denial.

The IHRA definition has since been adopted as policy by a large number of governments and universities in Western countries, including Australia in 2021. In 2019, then-US president Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing the IHRA definition of antisemitism to form the basis of prosecutions under existing anti-discrimination laws. The lead drafter of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, denounced the executive order as “an attack on academic freedom and free speech [that] will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself”.

Partly out of concern for this development, in 2020 an alternate definition of antisemitism, the Jerusalem Declaration, was endorsed by hundreds of academics specialising in antisemitism studies and Jewish studies, among many others. It explicitly states that “criticising or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism”, “evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state” and “supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights” are not instances of antisemitism in and of themselves.

It was in this context that Universities Australia devised their own definition of antisemitism — one that, as outlined in the university’s explanatory memorandum on the proposal, “draws particularly on the working definition developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and recommendations of Antisemitism Taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University, and New York University”. Those four universities are now routinely expelling and suspending students, stripping students of their degrees, barring university staff from entering campus buildings, and colluding with American immigration authorities to arrest and deport students for participating in Gaza solidarity protests.

“The culture at the University is becoming such that every time there is something of substance to be discussed, it’s not discussed,” says Pamela*, a University of Sydney academic. “It’s brought to the table as a matter of fact; as unavoidable. This was the case when they brought in the Campus Access Policy. We never had a collegial discussion about that. More and more, this is becoming the way of operating — of management imposing top-down rules.”

The same week the University of Sydney stated that the adoption of the UA definition had been “endorsed” by its Academic Board, references to both the IHRA definition and the Jerusalem Declaration were removed from the university’s list of supplementary resources supporting its anti-racism guidelines, leaving only the UA definition.

Following backlash from staff and students, the university quickly backtracked. The IHRA and Jerusalem Declaration definitions were hastily restored to the list of supplementary resources (an archived version of the list can be found here), and the next edition of Staff News noted that “last week’s Staff News incorrectly stated that Academic Board endorsed a new definition of antisemitism”.

In that same edition, however, the university also revealed that the new UA definition “will be used by decision-makers to assess complaints and allegations of antisemitism” — a statement explicitly at odds with the explanation the university gave the Academic Board.

“The real concern is that the universities or the federal government are going to enforce IHRA,” Pamela says. “IHRA is unworkable in an academic environment — it’s using the framework of antiracism to contain criticism of a political ideology, namely Zionism. It conflates criticising Israel with antisemitism.”

“I don’t know what to say. We see what’s happening in the United States. We don’t know where this will end up.”

Fundraiser for Noor and Hoor Hammad

If you’ve got anything to spare, please consider giving some money to this fundraiser I’m running for Noor Hammad, a young mum in Gaza, and her baby daughter Hoor. With the resumption of Israel’s bombing and displacement, it is getting harder and harder for them to stay safe and healthy. Please give anything you can.