Universities concede failures on antisemitism

Vice-chancellors from five of Australia’s leading universities conceded over three days of evidence in Melbourne last week that Jewish students and staff had been left feeling unsafe on campus, acknowledging gaps in complaints systems, training and community engagement even as they pointed to post-October 7 reforms.

Australian National University interim vice-chancellor Professor Rebekah Brown delivered the week’s most direct acknowledgment, apologising under cross-examination for failures in how the university handled its encampment, the longest-running in the country.

“All Jewish students and staff and their colleagues and friends, in fact, all students and staff, have an absolute right to feel safe, respected, and heard on our campus, and I’m sorry that they didn’t,” Brown said. “I’ve committed in my role, as long as I am the interim vice-chancellor, to do better.”

Brown accepted the university had been too slow to act and that its adopted definition of antisemitism had still not been embedded in conduct policies, more than four months after the ANU Council endorsed it. ANU acting provost Professor Joan Leach, giving separate evidence, conceded the university’s disclosure tool had no antisemitism category and that it had no restorative practices arising from the encampment protests.

A recurring theme was the gap between adopting antisemitism definitions and putting them into practice. UNSW vice-chancellor Professor Attila Brungs conceded his institution had been operating with three competing definitions and committed to consolidating them. University of Melbourne interim vice-chancellor Professor Glyn Davis rejected the characterisation that IHRA adoption at his institution was merely symbolic, but accepted it needed to be more clearly drawn into policy.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Professor Mark Scott acknowledged the referencing structure in his institution’s code of conduct was insufficiently accessible, while Monash University vice-chancellor Professor Sharon Pickering said she would now recommend Monash adopt the Universities Australia definition.

Complaints handling proved equally problematic. UNSW’s system could not categorise a complaint as antisemitic, a feature Brungs said would be added by August, and an internal review had found the procedure overly complex and lacking in trauma-informed practices. The picture was similar at ANU, where Brown acknowledged the absence of a single intake point and limited visibility across seven separate grievance processes.

Antisemitism-specific training emerged as a sector-wide gap. Brungs accepted that UNSW students received no such training. Davis conceded Melbourne’s anti-racism education materials made no mention of antisemitism. At ANU, Leach said new staff modules were being rolled out incrementally but were not yet comprehensive.

Several vice-chancellors accepted they had not adequately engaged with Jewish communities during the encampments. Scott said the University of Sydney had not consulted Jewish organisations before resolving its encampment and called this a likely failure. Confronted with former AUJS vice-president Zac Morris’s assessment that Sydney was one of the worst places to be a Jewish student, Scott accepted the criticism, saying, “We were not as attentive as we needed to be.”

Pickering reflected that she had not appreciated “how thinly buried antisemitism was in our society, and how quickly it was unleashed”.

Cross-examination by counsel for Jewish communal organisations and the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism secured commitments from multiple vice-chancellors to co-design action plans with Jewish staff and student bodies, moving beyond consultation toward active partnership.

At the sector level, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) chief executive Dr Mary Russell told the commission the regulator’s current powers were insufficient to respond quickly to campus antisemitism, and outlined legislative changes TEQSA had proposed, including an enforceable code carrying financial penalties and civil penalties for governance failures. Russell was critical of a poorly developed understanding of antisemitism across the sector and of universities’ reluctance to determine what constituted antisemitism, noting a conflation of academic freedom with freedom of speech during the protests.

New higher education standards introduced this week now require universities to prevent and respond to racism, including antisemitism, though the government has declined to specify which definition institutions must adopt.