Lecturer’s complaint

THE Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has renewed calls for universities to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism after a Jewish university lecturer said a student complaint letter was antisemitic.

Joel Katzav, a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, also labelled the university’s response “inappropriate”.

In 2019, the student accused Katzav of giving biased advice to an academic review committee, which led them to instruct the student to modify a thesis that made reference to Friedrich Nietzsche.

The 19th century German philosopher’s views are often associated with Nazism and fascism, yet the student also claimed Nietzsche is revered in Israel, which could imply a parallel between Israel and Nazism.

The student accused Katzav, who lived in Israel from the age of nine until he was 25, of “whitewashing” Nietzsche due to his Jewish background.

“Due to various agendas, Nietzsche appears to be one of the most highly revered philosophers in Israel,” the student wrote.

Katzav, who moved to Australia in 2017, rejected the student’s claims and went on to make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) about the university breaching its anti-racism policy in its response.

“Because I was Jewish, I was participating in whitewashing, from this student’s perspective, Nietzsche’s fascist political philosophy,” Katzav said.

“The student also associated me with a broader Jewish movement to support this kind of fascist philosophy, which in the thesis the student described as genocidal.”

Katzav also said it would be “odd” if Nietzsche was a very popular figure in Israel.

In response to the incident, ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim said Australian universities should adopt the IHRA definition.

“If the student’s comments involved stereotyping the lecturer’s views on the basis of the lecturer’s Israeli nationality or Jewish ethnicity, or were intended to compare Israel to Nazi Germany, then those comments clearly crossed the line into antisemitism, regardless of the student’s intentions,” Wertheim said.

“An incident such as this highlights the need for universities to adopt the IHRA definition as a tool for assessing whether an act or statement can reasonably be regarded as antisemitic, instead of relying on their own limited understanding and experience of antisemitism.”