From: Peter Baldwin
Sent: Friday, 13 March 2015 4:03 PM
To: ‘[email protected]’
Subject: violent dis­rup­tion of Kemp talk

Dear Dr Spence,
On Wednesday 11 March I attended a meeting at Sydney Uni­ver­sity that was addressed by Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afgh­anistan. Colonel Kemp was scheduled to speak about the ethical dilemmas that face military forces con­fron­ted by non-state adversar­ies, espe­cially those that delib­er­ately conduct their oper­a­tions in close proximity to civilian pop­u­la­tions with the goal of gaining pro­pa­ganda advantage from the inev­it­able cas­u­al­ties. He was in Israel during the Gaza conflict of July-August last year. He stated at the time that he was impressed by the IDF’s measures to minimize Palestini­an civilian cas­u­al­ties and that he had dif­fi­culty envisaging what more they could do to this end given the reality of military oper­a­tions.
By way of back­ground, I am a former politi­cian: the Labor MP for the seat of Sydney for fifteen years, and a member of the federal ministry for six years. For three of those years (1990 – 93) I was the Minister for Higher Education. During that period I visited a great many campuses and was, more than once, the target of student protest demon­stra­tions.
But I never exper­i­enced anything quite as repulsive as what I witnessed last Wednesday, partly captured in this YouTube video.
I learned about the meeting from an email flyer forwarded by the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, though I under­stand the meeting was sponsored by the Aus­trali­an Union of Jewish Students. The gathering was attended by a varied audience of students and others, including one other former par­lia­ment­ary colleague.
When I arrived at the meeting there was a group at the door handing out leaflets sup­port­ing the BDS campaign against Israel. After Colonel Kemp had spoken for about twenty minutes there was a kerfuffle and around 15 – 20 people forced their way in led by a young woman who repeatedly screeched “Richard Kemp supports genocide” into a megaphone that was set to maximum volume. The group chanted con­tinu­ously and defied the (very restrained) efforts of the security guards to evict them. They clearly intended to disrupt the meeting to the point where it could not continue. It was only after a concerted effort by the security people, with the protest­ors resisting violently, that the talk could be resumed. This was a truly fright­en­ing episode. At one point the lights went out, leading people to wonder what might come next.
In amongst the robotic chanting a few things stood out. The screech­ing young woman can be clearly heard express­ing sympathy for the extremist organ­isa­tion Hitz ut-Tahrir, whose Aus­trali­an spokesman gained notoriety last year for refusing (on ABC Lateline) to condemn the tactics of Islamic State (behead­ings, cru­ci­fix­ions, incin­er­a­tions, selling women into slavery). When one of the protest­ors was accused of fascistic behaviour, he responded “we are not fascists, we’re Marxist-Leninists” – another total­it­ari­an ideology respons­ible for tens of millions of deaths.
The dis­ruptors tried to suppress the views of Colonel Kemp, who gave a lucid and well-reasoned account of the moral issues in this kind of conflict in the limited time he had available, yet insist on the right of Hitz ut-Tahrir to spout their genocidal ideology, a sample of which was reported in today’s Aus­trali­an newspaper:
THE top Aus­trali­an cleric of extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has ramped up his hate speech in a rant referring to Jews as “the most evil creature of Allah” who have “corrupted the world” and will “pay for blood with blood”.
In the latest tirade to surface, cleric Ismail al-Wahwah — rep­res­ent­ing an organ­isa­tion whose stated aim is to take over the world — said recog­nising Jews con­sti­tuted the “epitome of evil” because that would “strengthen the cancerous entity”.
This, appar­ently, is accept­able speech to these champions of the ‘left’ – a striking con­firm­a­tion of the old trope about extremes of Left and Right meeting at some point. The group primarily respons­ible for this outrage, a Trot­sky­ist group calling itself the ‘Socialist Altern­at­ive’, has a record of this kind of thing at your uni­ver­sity (this incident for example).
It seems you have active at your uni­ver­sity a bunch of total­it­ari­ans who think they have a right of veto on the expres­sion of views they dis­ap­prove of, and who will try to enforce this veto by violent dis­rup­tion. The effect this will have on the free exchange of ideas is obvious. Potential speakers will think twice about the prospect of being subjected to this kind of thing. The expres­sion of certain view­points will quietly disappear from campuses and students will increas­ingly inhabit an intel­lec­tu­al mono­cul­ture in which only approved opinions are sayable.
According to one Jewish student who I com­mu­nic­ated with today the climate at Sydney Uni­ver­sity is becoming increas­ingly poisonous and fearful for iden­ti­fi­ably Jewish students, espe­cially those who have the temerity to defend Israel.
Do you agree with me, Dr Spence, that these are deeply sinister devel­op­ments? Do you accept that an insti­tu­tion where such behaviour is tolerated has ceased, in one crucial respect, to deserve to be called a Uni­ver­sity?
More to the point, will you:
· Unequi­voc­ally condemn this behaviour and make clear it will not be tolerated in future
· Take steps to ensure the per­pet­rat­ors are dealt with under uni­ver­sity dis­cip­lin­ary pro­ced­ures
· Commit to restoring a genuine climate of free debate at Sydney Uni­ver­sity in which all can par­ti­cip­ate without fear of intim­id­a­tion?
I look forward to your response.
Best wishes,
Peter Baldwin