To stifle growing pro-Palestinian activities on Australian campuses, university authorities are developing and applying disparate techniques of control. Consequently, the university as a place of free speech, political activism and the right to protest is under attack.
The Universities of ,Ի are particularly punitive. The intricate intrusiveness and hyper-vigilance of their techniques of control are well known and widely criticised.
All these techniques have been identified by members of Educational Researchers for Palestine — a group I belong to.
Such patterns are evident in the views and material we have gathered from universities and from our own experiences, observations and communications with other staff and students. While the following techniques are not equally evident in all universities, various combinations are evident in many.
1. Control through double-speak
Universities claim to uphold free speech and academic freedom. But on matters related to Israel/Palestine they shut both down. They also claim to balance free speech with their antiracism agendas. But these agendas are selective. Antisemitism is their focus. Anti-Palestinian racism, including their own, is not. racism involves ‘actions that silence, exclude, erase, stereotype, defame, or dehumanise Palestinians and their narratives.’
They say they balance free speech with ensuring a safe environment. But their main concern is the political backlash associated with purported complaints about the safety of Jewish students and staff. In contrast, the university itself creates an unsafe environment for Palestinian staff, students and their allies including their Jewish allies.
2. Control through distraction
By focusing on antisemitism, universities distract attention from anti-Palestinian racism on campus and from Israel’s dreadful treatment of the Palestinian people. This distraction involves endless debates about what constitutes antisemitism. And universities’ ambiguous definitions of antisemitism allow them flexibility in classifying hateful and threatening speech.
In February 2025, Universities Australia (UA) released its highly ambiguous working definition of “”. This was endorsed by all 39 members. How individual universities will embed their endorsement is not yet clear but further distraction is guaranteed.
3. Spatial control
Restrictions are placed on the spaces where Palestinian supporters might gather to prepare banners and posters, distribute materials and hold events. Students are not allowed to announce events in classrooms or lecture theatres, to leave fliers on desks or posters on walls. These who don’t “belong” to the university are prohibited from involvement in protests on university grounds and threatened with trespass.
4. Language and image control
The campus is to be cleansed of posters, fliers, flags, chalked messages. Almost any image, phrase or slogan may be deemed antisemitic. Hence, all images of Palestine or messages of Palestine advocacy or solidarity can be defined as contravening university rules.
5. Political control
Student and staff activities relating to Palestine are strongly discouraged — clubs, film screenings, speakers’ forums, petitioning, distributing leaflets, chalking — even fundraising. University approval can be sought but such approval is largely a delaying and censorship ploy involving microscopic bureaucratic hurdles.
Some academic staff are expected to become agents of the university’s political control in their classrooms. They must ensure that nothing is said or seen that is unrelated to their immediate teaching topic.
When linked to Palestine/Israel, certain research, teaching and learning are considered dangerous — justice and ethics, human rights, international law, settler colonialism, apartheid, imperialism and the history and geopolitics of the Middle East. Those pursuing such “dangerous knowledge” may feel the need to water-down their curriculum and research.
6. Technological surveillance
In some cases, if they are to use a university account staff and students must agree to being monitored. Whether they agree or not technology is used to monitor pro-Palestinian activities, to identify “ring leaders” and participants. Pro-Palestinian activists may also have their technology use restricted thus making it difficult to share information. Certainly, over time, universities have increased their surveillance of all staff and students — usually with little or no follow up. However, their surveillance and follow up have intensified in response to pro-Palestinian activism.
7. Discipline and punishment
Students and staff are subjected to various forms. Their self-defence is time-consuming, costly and emotionally draining.
Peaceful events are often redefined as potentially threatening and violent. Hence security staff and police are used to “keep the peace” and to identify and report “leaders” and “troublemakers”. They have been used to shut down encampments and protests. At encampments they have not protected students from violent attacks by extreme right-wing groups. Their presence is implicitly threatening, and their behaviour is sometimes physically violent.
Undergraduate and graduate students have been “spoken to”, warned, suspended, fined and expelled. Staff have also been “spoken to” and warned, had their teaching and other activities monitored and reported by pro-Israeli/Zionist students and other staff. They have had their research questioned and some have had their grants suspended.
8. Climate control
A climate of fear and distrust is created. It has a chilling effect on everyday university activities and relationships. Fear causes self-censorship. Events are relocated or re-badged.
Staff feel their opportunities for jobs, tenure, promotion and academic leave are at risk. Students feel at risk of suspension and expulsions. They often don’t know if their peers, lecturers or supervisors will support or report them. Palestinian, Muslim and Arab staff feel extra visible and vulnerable.
The result: Universities of bad faith and ethical emptiness.
They have allowed themselves to be intimidated by politicians and special interest groups. They have tried to bury discussion of an inexcusable tragedy involving genocide. They have sacrificed the notion that knowledge must be free and fearless — corrupting truth and undermining trust and collegiality. Timid and small minded, they implicitly encourage staff and students to be the same.
Were they not so ethically empty universities could have practised an ethic of care, courage and compassion in response to the ongoing horrors visited by Israel on Gaza and the West Bank. They could have developed this into a sector wide ethos.
They could have responded to the desperate for help from Universities in Gaza. They could have explored, with staff and students, ways to help Gaza recover from the educational obliteration of . They could have mobilised their knowledge and expertise to contribute to understandings of the issues and to consider how university members might help alleviate the Palestinian people’s terrible suffering.
Could have? Should have.
[Jane Kenway is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in educational sociology. This article was first published on the and republished by Academics for Palestine WA.]