Dear university vice-chancellors, After weeks of your inaction, the time has come for you to listen hard – not only to your Jewish students and Jewish staff, but also to Jewish parents. Your acquiescence to the growing unruly mobs that have gathered on campuses around Australia has given way to the ugliest behaviour this country […]
Read MoreForget legal advice, VCs need moral courage
The Gaza solidarity encampments at Australian universities reveal two things that may have slipped many people’s attention. First, free speech laws in this country are a bugger’s muddle. Second, too many vice-chancellors, paid more than $1m to lead our most esteemed universities, behave like low-level bureaucrats. While some university chancellors, led by Jennifer Westacott, are […]
Read MoreAlbanese must speak up for Israel’s right to exist
It is well past time for Anthony Albanese to speak up loud and long on what he knows to be true: an evil tide of anti-Semitism is rising in Australia – not reasoned opposition to Israel’s campaign against the Hamas terrorist organisation but outright hatred of Jews for no reason other than they are Jews. […]
Read MoreCATCH-ALL INQUIRY INTO UNI RACE HATE
An inquiry into the heated tensions on university campuses over the Israel-Gaza war will cover all kinds of racism, despite Jewish leaders and crossbench MPs calling for a more focused probe on the anti-Semitism crisis. The inquiry, announced in the budget, will examine the prevalence and impact of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism generally in universities. […]
Read More‘CLEAR OUT UNIVERSITY HATE CAMPS’
Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg has called on all universities to clear the pro-Palestine “camps of hate’’ from their campuses, urging the higher education institutions to follow the lead of Deakin University which on Monday ordered the dismantling of the camp protest on its east Melbourne site. “Our universities must be safe spaces for learning and […]
Read MoreToll revised with fewer known women, children
GAZA WAR NEW YORK: The death toll in the Gaza Strip from the Israel-Hamas war is still more than 35,000, but the enclave’s Ministry of Health has revised its breakdown of the fatalities, the United Nations said after Israel questioned a sudden change in numbers. Israel last week questioned why the figures for the deaths […]
Read MoreStudents to defy Deakin Uni’s order
Deakin University has ordered pro-Palestine protesters off its Burwood campus, citing the ‘‘safety, security and amenity of all campus users’’. But camp representative Jasmine Duff said the protesters – including 20 people staying overnight and more during the day – had received legal advice that the camp was lawful and they would not comply with […]
Read MoreAustralia’s UN Vote Is a Nation-Darkening Shame
Nothing Penny Wong does in the rest of her political life will wipe out the disgrace of voting in the United Nations last week to reward Hamas mass-murderers and rapists. Australians should weep in shame. No decision by any Australian foreign minister in my life has been so disgusting, dishonest, incoherent and wilfully blind to […]
Read MoreFinally, a Uni leader with the guts to call out campus anti-Semitism
I applaud Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott’s fearless stand against anti- Semitism based upon her university’s Charter of Academic Freedom, which she claims “requires that freedoms and rights be exercised responsibly with zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, hate speech or intimidation” (“ ‘Universities should never be places of fear’: a leader stands tall […]
Read MoreMelbourne Uni Head a Master in Equivocation
The chancellor of Australia’s highest-ranked university has refused to say there is a specific anti-Semitism crisis in higher education, declaring there are “many different forms of racism” that are abhorrent and deserve attention, and that questions of university leaders’ handling of the Israel-Hamas war were “looking for division”. The comments from University of Melbourne chancellor […]
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