ECAJ statement on the Report of Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian universities.
Quotes to be attributed to ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim:
We now have a second parliamentary report which confirms what the Jewish community, students and academic staff have been saying for more than a year, namely that there has been an enormous increase in antisemitic behaviour at many Australian universities and that the response of most university administrations has been hopelessly inadequate.
Many of the recommendations about the need to streamline complaints processes, reporting of complaints and training of staff to identify and deal with antisemitism are welcome, as is the recommendation about expanding the powers of TEQSA to enforce compliance with higher education and student safety and well-being standards. We called for these measures in our submission to the parliamentary inquiry.
We would also like to have seen a recommendation about the need for a proper investigation into persistent reports about foreign government funding and interference in Australian universities, as the ECAJ also called for.
While the report identifies the correct issues, some of the recommendations are expressed in less forthright language than we think the situation calls for.
The report is correct in recommending that universities need to adopt a clear definition of antisemitism, which “aligns closely” with the International Holocaust Working Alliance (IHRA) working definition. Whilst we would have preferred a straightforward recommendation that the IHRA definition be adopted, the committee has impliedly repudiated the definition of antisemitism recently adopted by the Group of 8 universities, which sharply diverges from the IHRA definition, and has been debunked and rejected by the Jewish community.
Another important recommendation points to the need to amend the Fair Work Act so as to over-ride enterprise bargaining agreements to the extent that they currently prohibit universities from sacking or disciplining academics or research grant recipients who engage in egregious public acts of racial vilification and other forms of vilification, including through publication of antisemitic content. However, the report recommends only that the government “consider” doing this, rather than actually doing it, which seems weak in the circumstances.
We welcome the recommendation that a judicial inquiry be kept on the table as a possible future measure if universities do not clean up their act in the next 12 months.
