Flawed report does not seriously address Jew hate

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report published last week, February 17, Respect@Uni: Study into antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and the experience of First Nations people is stated to be the “first national survey that attempts to capture comprehensive, sector-wide data on the lived experience of racism in universities”.

The AHRC report is, however, less than comprehensive and its blindness and lack of appreciation of the characteristics of antisemitism are a great disappointment. Although the AHRC was provided with the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A)’s 2025 detailed survey and analysis of antisemitism in Australian universities following Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023, that survey did not rate a mention. Nor did the antisemitism survey conducted by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) in 2023; nor did the comprehensive reports on anti-Jewish incidents published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), based on many years of data collection and analysis.

Respect@Uni was developed by Giridharan Sivaraman, Race Discrimination Commissioner, who has grounded it in critical race theory, into which the Jewish people do not easily fit. While acknowledging the antisemitism that Jewish students and academics face, it fails to acknowledge the historic and contemporary casting of Jews as a uniquely powerful and demonic global enemy, a quality that is distinct to antisemitism. Instead, it tends to equilibrate all racisms as the same and merely to identify where they intersect – a simplistic, abstract, cookie-cutter approach. Such misdiagnosis can yield a misguided response.

There is nothing of the recent escalation of antisemitic violence in Australia. This oversight, despite warnings of the rise of violent antisemitism by ASIO chief Mike Burgess and extensive published observations on the prolific nature of attacks on local Jews, is surprising. The omission occurred because Respect@Uni does not recognise antisemitism as a distinct phenomenon that is dangerously connected to the worst terror attack in Australia. The report’s maximum acknowledgement is a last-minute note in the preface to recognise the Bondi Chanukah massacre.

One sees that it notes but does not endorse recommendations about combating antisemitism at universities made by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. To the contrary, those are treated as controversial, by citing criticism by the tiny so-called Jewish Council of Australia. Unacknowledged is the endorsement of the report by the Jewish community’s widely recognised and representative national roof body and all mainstream Jewish community bodies.

Worse yet it creates a divide between those whom it calls “religious Jewish respondents” and those whom it calls “secular Jewish respondents”. No such division is identified for any other grouping.

Jewish community institutions’ accounts of their experiences of antisemitism are marginalised. This disregard has the effect of stripping Jewish respondents of agency, implicitly suggesting that their experiences of hostility or exclusion are subject to validation only if they conform to externally approved AHRC formulations. This is not a neutral methodological choice. It echoes a long-standing dynamic in which Jews are required to justify claims of antisemitism in ways not demanded of other groups.

Respect@Uni details Islamophobic, Middle Eastern and anti-Palestinian racisms. It states: “Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim and Middle Eastern staff and students have endured significantly heightened hostility.” Yet in analysing who experiences racism, the Israeli category is erased, despite the shocking prevalence on Australian university campuses of boycotts against Israeli academics and students. Campus activity that isolates, dehumanises or vilifies Israeli academics and students because they are Israelis, irrespective of their political, religious or ideological beliefs is racism. Not so at Respect@Uni.

When one realises that the report also does not use the definition of antisemitism adopted by the Australian government, which includes demonisation of Israelis, this makes sense as part of a pattern of bias.

The gaslighting opportunities provided by the failings in the AHRC report were immediately weaponised by Mehreen Faruqi’s call for abandonment of recommendations in the July 2025 report of the special envoy. Like the AHRC, the Greens Senator equates antisemitism with Islamophobia. Yet Jews in Australia are about 30 times more likely to experience racism than Muslims.

The AHRC missed a major opportunity to demonstrate its relevance and effectiveness when Respect@Uni failed to address the antisemitism crisis on Australian university campuses. More than that, this report raises doubts about the AHRC’S commitment to the requirement of impartiality. Given that this is just the latest in a series of serious missteps by the AHRC, perhaps an external review of its operations is warranted.

It is a regrettable irony that the AHRC does not see antisemitism as it is but instead subtly perpetuates it.

Greg Rose is a professor of law at the University of Wollongong and a director of the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism.