The political left has become the principal source of antisemitism on Australian university campuses, with pro-racist views now entrenched in sections of academia.
That is the central finding of a major new report by Professor Philip Mendes, director of the Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit at Monash University, published by the Centre for Independent Studies.
The report, titled ‘Progressive Intolerance’, documents what Mendes describes as an “unprecedented outbreak of antisemitic hatred within Australian society” since October 2023, and includes a controversial recommendation that Australia’s immigration system be reformed to exclude individuals with records of antisemitic views.
In a wide-ranging interview with The AJN, Mendes explained that his concerns about the convergence of antizionism and antisemitism had been building for decades, but that the events following October 7 represented a dramatic escalation.
“It became evident pretty soon after October 2023 that this convergence of those two movements, antizionism and antisemitism, had moved from what I thought was mostly a fringe marginal group affiliated with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement into the mainstream,” he said.
“Suddenly, the few people that I knew of, maybe a few dozen people around Australia, that had been presenting this extremist convergence perspective for decades, suddenly the numbers seemed to triple or even jump into the hundreds.”
Mendes pointed to the Overland literary journal as an early indicator of this shift, noting that by November 2023 the journal was publishing “highly inflammatory petitions that were quickly leaking from antizionism or pro-Hamas into open antisemitism that were being signed by hundreds of people, a lot of them academics and a fair number senior academics”.
“These were not marginal people. They were not insignificant nobodies. Some of them were prominent academics, mostly in the social sciences.”
The report cites research including the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism online survey of 548 Jewish students and staff, which found that 84 per cent named the “political left” as the principal source of antisemitism on campus, compared to only 37 per cent who identified right-wing sources.
Mendes rejected the argument, commonly advanced by the Greens and the Jewish Council of Australia, that antisemitism emanates primarily from the far-right.
“I’ve been in a university for about 30 years now. I’ve never seen a Nazi, or anyone that identifies as a Nazi at my university, or any university in Australia,” he said.
“The great majority of people in academia, particularly since October 2023, that have been presenting racist, anti-Jewish views, claim to be on the left.”
In his report, Mendes writes that many progressives have adopted what he terms a “progressive except for Jews” position, and that racist antizionism has increasingly converged with older far-right conspiratorial stereotypes of Jews as secret and powerful influences on finance, politics and the media.
The report was largely completed before the December 14 Bondi terror attack that killed 15 people. Mendes said he delayed publication to observe whether pro-Palestinian advocacy groups would express remorse for their inflammatory rhetoric.
“I wanted to go back to Overland journal. I wanted to go back to the Greens. I wanted to go back and look at what the Jewish Council of Australia was saying, and look at whether they were expressing genuine remorse,” he said.
“And the answer is no.”
Mendes reserved particular criticism for the Jewish Council of Australia, which he described as providing “a Jewish alibi for the most ethnocentric sections of the pro-Palestinian movement”.
“The Jewish Council is not about Jewish anything. It is simply a Jewish alibi for these groups,” he said.
In his report, he compares the Jewish Council of Australia to historical groups of Jews who aligned with their community’s oppressors, including those who defended Stalinist antisemitism during the Slansky Trial and Doctors Plot in the early 1950s.
Perhaps the most controversial element of the report is Mendes’s call for changes to Australia’s immigration system. He recommends that the Department of Home Affairs proactively screen visa applicants for antisemitic views on social media or associations with groups perpetrating anti-Jewish violence.
“In the current context, in the post-Bondi context, it would be criminal of the government to admit further people into Australia with racist views against Jewish people,” he said.
When asked how authorities would determine who is a racist, Mendes pointed to existing security screening processes.
“How do we determine if any potential immigrant is a threat to the security of people here? Check their social media, check their application. I don’t work for ASIO. I’m sure these people know their job a lot better than I do. We don’t let people in here who we know are leaders of the mafia. The same logic applies.”
The report also calls for comprehensive educational interventions at both secondary and tertiary levels to counter antisemitic arguments. Many teachers, academics and students, the report states, “seem to believe, erroneously, that antisemitism is the product only of Nazis and the far-right”, a belief that allows progressive antisemites to claim they cannot be racists because the left is allegedly anti-racist.
Mendes acknowledged that reforming universities would be challenging but expressed cautious optimism.
“If you look at the STEM areas, engineering, business and so on, there is very little antisemitism there. So we have more of a problem in some disciplines, some social sciences. But that doesn’t mean everyone teaching or researching in that area holds these views.”
He expressed hope that the Royal Commission announced following the Bondi attack would force antisemitic academics to justify their positions publicly.
“A lot of these people think they can still continue post-Bondi with no critical reflection on what they and their like-minded organisations are doing, and I think the Royal Commission will force them to justify why they are promoting racism towards the Jewish community.”
The AJN asked Mendes how the report came to be commissioned by the Centre for Independent Studies, a right-leaning think tank, rather than a progressive organisation.
“It is disappointing that progressive think tanks, for example, the Australia Institute, have not been active on this issue,” he said. “But maybe that is part of the problem.”
He emphasised that his political views remained guided by core progressive values of egalitarianism and fairness, even as many on the left have abandoned the Jewish community.
Despite the grim findings, Mendes concluded on an open note.
“If anyone says to me they have views on Gaza or Israel that I don’t agree with, that’s fine, if they’re willing to be educated about the history of antisemitism in Australia and globally, and how we can confront the antisemitism crisis in Australia. I’ll be happy to meet them for coffee tomorrow.”
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