2025-06-12
Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Higher Education Spokesperson, who is a patron of the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine, has responded to the Inquiry’s recently released Preliminary Report (Report).
The Report outlines three preliminary findings:
1) Australian universities have restricted the free speech and academic freedom of staff and students on the question of Palestine;
2) Australian universities have targeted students and staff who express support for Palestine for surveillance and discipline;
3) Universities have used existing policies and devised new policies in an opaque way to target and censor students and staff expressing support for Palestine.
The People’s Inquiry will be holding public hearings in Sydney, Melbourne and over Zoom to allow university staff and students to share their experiences. Observers and media are welcome. Anyone interested in participating or observing the hearings should register here.
Lines attributable to Senator Mehreen Faruqi:
“This preliminary report confirms what many students and staff already know- universities have trampled over the values of free speech and academic freedom in their cowardly attempts to shut down support for a free Palestine.
“Shutting down peaceful protests while bombs fall on Gaza is an act of complicity. By silencing those who speak out against genocide, our universities are not neutral — they are choosing to side with a brutal, apartheid regime.
"Academic freedom means nothing if it doesn’t extend to the most urgent moral issues of our time. The universities that have punished students and staff for standing with Palestine are revealing themselves not as spaces of free inquiry, but as instruments of political censorship."
"The preliminary report makes for disturbing reading, showing that universities are turning into ideological battlegrounds where only state-sanctioned narratives are allowed to survive. This is not just about Palestine — it's about the death of democratic space."
"When institutions silence those demanding justice for Palestine, they send a chilling message: that truth is conditional, and that certain lives — Palestinian lives — are not worthy of solidarity. This is a stain on the conscience of Australian academia.
“Across Australian universities, students are already being surveilled, censured, and punished for standing in solidarity with Palestine. Adopting the IHRA definition will only shut down criticism of Israel and intensify the crackdown- universities must resist the pressure to do so.”
Comments attributed to APAN President Nasser Mashni:
“This harrowing report lays bare what so many of us already knew: that speaking up for Palestine comes at a cost – to reputations, educational opportunities and careers.
“During the past 20 months, universities across the country have stepped into the role of censors and surveillance organisations, distorting existing policy or arbitrarily creating new policy in order to restrict student and staff free speech and protest rights, and undermine academic independence.
“Universities have also weaponised antisemitism and twisted the concept of psycho-social safety to suppress Palestinian voices and learning about Palestine, deliberately creating a climate of fear on campus for those who oppose institutional complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide.
“This is textbook anti-Palestinian racism: the calculated silencing, erasure and dehumanisation of Palestinians and those who act in solidarity with them.
“The experiences documented by this report, and the hearings and recommendations to come, must mark a turning point for universities. They must defend civil liberties, sever their ties to genocidal Israel, and support Palestinian justice.”
Lines attributable to Dr Max Kaiser, Executive Officer, Jewish Council of Australia:
“This report reveals a chilling reality: universities are surveilling, disciplining, and censoring students and staff who speak up for Palestine. Events cancelled, lectures monitored, students tracked via Wi-Fi—all justified by vague appeals to ‘wellbeing’ and false claims of antisemitism. As a Jewish organisation, we refuse to let our identity be weaponised to shut down legitimate debate. Universities must end these draconian practices and restore the right to speak freely on campus.”
Line attributable to James McVicar, Inquiry Panel Member and Education Officer for the National Union of Students:
"University students and staff have faced surveillance, discipline, and even expulsion for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. History will remember what side our vice-chancellors and politicians stood on during this crime against humanity."