The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion opens a week of hearings into Australian universities in Melbourne on Monday, on the same day that new rules requiring every university to have a plan for handling racism take effect.
Hearing Block 4 runs from Monday to Friday at 11 Exhibition Street and continues in Melbourne the following week. It is public and livestreamed. Commissioner Virginia Bell, a former justice of the High Court, said in June that the block would examine the lived experiences, prevalence and impact of antisemitism in educational settings, and investigate how institutions responded. The commission has taken more than 20,000 submissions since February, over a third of them from Victoria.
The standards commencing Monday require universities to adopt definitions of racism covering antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They must run transparent complaints processes and set rules for staff and students on campus and online. Public universities must publish the outcomes and decisions of their governing bodies. The regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, will develop guidance on how the standards work in practice.
Jason Clare, the Minister for Education, wants more than that. He told Sky News on Sunday that he would legislate to let TEQSA fine universities directly. "The regulator at the moment, if it wants to fine a university, needs to go to court," he said. "I figure that that's not the right approach and so I'll introduce legislation to give the regulator more powers over the coming months." No penalty amounts have been specified.
Clare also previewed the week's evidence. "I think you're going to hear some pretty horrific evidence tomorrow and over the next few days in particular from Jewish students about the abuse that they suffered, the intimidation and the harassment that they experienced at universities," he said. "And that's just not on." Universities, he said, "were caught flat footed", and while some had improved, it was "not enough".
Not every witness is appearing to agree with him. Yasmine Johnson, a national co-convener of Students for Palestine and a Jewish student at the University of Technology Sydney, gives evidence on Monday. "We have seen the royal commission extensively smear the pro-Palestine campaign as inherently anti-Semitic," she told AAP. "I'm appearing before the royal commission in order to defend the pro-Palestine movement as a movement for justice." She said students had been told they could not use the word genocide on a leaflet they produced.
Hugh de Kretser, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, is also listed, along with Andy Smidt, an academic who led a SafeWork NSW complaint against the University of Sydney over an alleged failure to protect Jewish staff. The University of Sydney told its staff on Friday that it would appear. "Antisemitism has absolutely no place at the University of Sydney, or in society," it said. The University of Melbourne is appearing as well.
The commission was established on 9 January by letters patent issued by the Governor-General, Sam Mostyn, after the Bondi Beach attack of 14 December. Its interim report in April made 14 recommendations and the government accepted all of them. The final report is due on 14 December.
State and territory education ministers meet on Wednesday, with antisemitism and school bullying on the agenda. The commission publishes its witness list one day before each witness appears.
