QUT review: ‘Dutton’s Jew’ symposium not antisemitic
The review acknowledged 'some of the content was capable of causing offence and more careful consideration should have been given'
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin has rejected the findings of an independent review into a controversial “anti-racism” symposium that featured a presentation titled “Dutton’s Jew”, saying the Jewish community “didn’t need a review to know how grossly offensive and insulting this presentation was”.
Former Federal Court Justice John Middleton’s review into the “National Symposium on Unifying Anti-Racist Research and Action” held at the Queensland University of Technology’s Carumba Institute in January found “neither the content presented, nor the conduct of participants, were antisemitic when taken in the context of the event”.
However, the review acknowledged “some of the content was capable of causing offence and more careful consideration should have been given to the timing and potential risk in light of the broader social context”.
The controversy centred on a slide presentation by Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz that claimed Jews who support Opposition Leader Peter Dutton “hate Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims”, are “anti-immigrant”, and “think of antisemitism as the only form of racism”.
QUT vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil said the university would adopt all of Middleton’s recommendations, including strengthened oversight of the Carumba Institute through new reporting lines to the Provost and adoption of Universities Australia’s agreed working definition on combatting antisemitism.
“It is vital that universities remain a place where diverse perspectives can be explored, challenged and better understood, however it is equally essential that these discussions are undertaken in a way that is respectful and avoids vilification or discrimination,” Sheil said.
Ryvchin said on X on Wednesday, “The Dutton’s Jew slide and accompanying remarks suggest that the vast majority of Australian Jews are so obsequious or unenlightened that we can’t tell the difference between genuine friends and those who seek to use us.”
He described the phrase “Dutton’s Jew” as “particularly sinister”, arguing it echoed historical antisemitic tropes.
“The idea that Jews ‘belong’ to powerful political figures or are their pawns runs through the bloodiest moments in Jewish history. The claim that Jews were the instruments of Napoleon, of the Polish nobility, of Bolshevism, was used to justify mass slaughter of Jews by the enemies of those regimes,” Ryvchin said.
The original symposium sparked significant controversy, with ECAJ president Daniel Aghion describing the slide as “overtly antisemitic” and Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler writing to Education Minister Jason Clare calling it a “festival of hatred”.
The incident prompted Sheil to issue a written apology after a phone call from Clare, resulted in QUT being summoned before the joint parliamentary inquiry on campus antisemitism.
Federal Labor member for Macnamara Josh Burns, who chaired the inquiry, described the material as “completely irresponsible and one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in the past 18 months”.
QUT had been warned prior to the event about potential antisemitic content by the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism, which expressed concerns about speakers with a history of “anti-Jewish racism”.
Schwartz defended her presentation as part of a “comedy debate” criticising Dutton’s political approach to the Jewish community, arguing it was intended to highlight political exploitation of antisemitism.