It was 2018, and Dan Tehan, then federal education minister, was concerned about freedom of speech on university campuses. 

The problem? Left-wing student protesters were attempting boycotts of certain speakers they opposed, like Bettina Arndt. At the University of Sydney, riot police broke up a protest against an Arndt speech.  

Coalition politicians talked of a “free speech crisis” on Australian campuses. Tehan claimed freedom of speech had to be protected at universities, “even where what is being said may be unpopular or challenging”. He announced a review of freedom of speech on Australian campuses, to be led by former High Court judge Robert French.

The flap about a “free speech crisis” came at a time of increased left-leaning activism on campuses, particularly related to deplatforming campaigns against right-wing figures like Arndt, Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern. 

After French duly delivered his report, the Morrison government forced all the public universities to update their policies to be in line with the model he put forward. Nearly all of them adopted strengthened codes protecting free speech and academic freedom. 

Fast-forward to 2024, and the Coalition is a lot less concerned about free speech on campus. Now the problem is too much speech, of the wrong kind: specifically, antisemitism. 

In the wake of the pro-Palestine student protests that swept Australian universities earlier this year, the Coalition’s Sarah Henderson has been running a hard line on the problem of hate speech on campus. 

Almost from the beginning of the university encampments earlier this year, Henderson was calling for the camps to be cleared and for police to be called in. Henderson also engineered a Senate inquiry into the issue, with the aim of getting up a full-scale royal commission into antisemitism in universities. “This includes holding universities and the Albanese government to account for failing to keep students and staff safe from hate and incitement, including infiltration by extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir”, she told the media in July. 

The Senate inquiry has already provided Henderson with plenty of further opportunities for publicity. She was able to haul prominent vice-chancellors like Mark Scott and Genevieve Bell before the Committee for Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and ask them pointed questions about their supposed failures. 

Testimony to the inquiry found a rising tide of antisemitism on campus, and not just after October 7 or related to the university student protests; there were nearly 700 submissions. The Australian Union of Jewish Students submitted that “Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe, ostracised, and targeted for their identity … including verbal abuse, hostile rhetoric, physical threats, and discriminatory actions”. 

An August 2023 survey of Jewish students at Australian universities conducted by the Social Research Centre for the Zionist Federation of Australia found significant levels of unreconstructed holocaust denial and religious and racist discrimination. The bureaucratic and legalistic responses by many university administrations to complaints — for instance, many universities tried to block FOI requests — further alienated Jewish students. 

Perhaps the most newsworthy moment of the Senate inquiry came during the testimony of the University of Sydney’s Mark Scott, whose campus was the site of a long-running Students for Palestine encampment. Scott apologised to Jewish students at the University, telling them he “failed them”. He also pointed out that under the university’s policies, which had been changed to comply with the French review, the encampment was a legitimate protest. 

Henderson was having none of that. In tense and hostile questioning, she repeatedly pressed Scott on why he didn’t change the rules to make sure the encampment was shut down. 

Senator Henderson: But you supported the encampment. That’s the point I’m making.

Professor Scott: I think there is a difference—

Henderson: You never sent out the signal—

Scott: Let me be clear—

Henderson: You never sent out the signal that this was inappropriate.

Scott: I would have been very happy for the encampment to go on day one. What I recognise—

Henderson: That’s not what you said in May. You said it was a legitimate protest.

Henderson also repeatedly interrupted and badgered witnesses such as the Jewish Council of Australia’s (JCA) Sarah Schwartz. 

When Schwartz pointed out that any full-scale inquiry into antisemitism would inevitably seek to investigate political speech about the government of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism, Henderson pounced. She bombarded Schwartz and JCA representative Elizabeth Strakosch with questions about the Jewish Council of Australia’s legitimacy and whether they supported “slogans such as ‘river to the sea’ and ‘intifada’ being shouted on university campuses at Jewish students”. Despite Strakosch’s attempts to answer, Henderson kept interrupting her, finishing with “I think that sums up the sort of organisation you are.”

Senator Henderson: I’m going to go through this as quickly as I can. Do you support slogans such as “river to the sea” and “intifada” being shouted on university campuses at Jewish students. Of course, as we know, “intifada” is another way of calling for the destruction of Israel, as is “river to the sea”. Do you support those slogans?

Dr Strakosch: Actually, I’m feeling like some of these questions are not giving us the space to legitimately address our submission to the inquiry and are instead seeking to trap—

Henderson: Sorry, we’ve got limited time. We’re trying to understand your concerns. Do you believe that those slogans are antisemitic?

Schwartz: We’ve made multiple statements as an organisation, one on distinguishing between the Star of David and the Israeli flag, which we think is a very important thing for people to distinguish between and relates to the distinction between criticism of Israel and Jewish identity. And I’m going to get to the—

Henderson: Sorry, I’m going to draw you back to my question.

Chair [Labor’s Nita Green]: Senator Henderson, you are going to let the witness answer the question.

Henderson: No; I’m entitled to interrupt if the question’s not being answered.

Schwartz: I’m going to get to—

Chair: No. The witness is entitled to answer the question and she’s doing that. They’re not one-word-answer questions. Let’s be respectful, shall we?

Henderson: I’m entitled to prosecute—

Strakosch: The question is about the slogan “from the river to the sea”.

Henderson: “The river to the sea” and “intifada”, that’s right. Do you believe that the use of those slogans on university campuses is antisemitic?

Strakosch: No. In fact, “from the river to the sea” has been widely acknowledged, including by the Palestinian movement, to refer to the equal treatment and democratic equality of all peoples, including Jewish people and Palestinian people, in the area covering Israel and Palestine.

Henderson: Even the prime minister says that he recognises that that is a call for the destruction of Israel.

Senator [Paul] Scarr: As a Jewish state.

Henderson: As a Jewish state.

The inquiry also heard evidence that much of what was described by Jewish students as antisemitic and hateful was triggered by the presence of pro-Palestinian protests themselves. One student told the inquiry that “the actions of the encampment … have resulted in a palpable level of anxiety and at times fear among my Jewish peers on campus.”

There was a consistent conflation of criticism of the Gaza conflict, the IDF and the Netanyahu government with broader charges of antisemitic hate. The newly appointed special envoy to combat antisemitism Jillian Segal’s submission, for instance, mentions “the proliferation of posters and stickers on campus, many of which contained antisemitic content or anti-Israel content”.  

The Senate committee has now handed down its report on the possibilities for an inquiry. The majority report, backed by Labor, states that it is “deeply troubled by the experiences of Jewish students and staff at Australian universities”, but stops short of recommending that a formal commission of inquiry be set up. The dissenting report from Coalition senators says one is needed.

Last week, even before the Senate committee handed down its report, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called for Mark Scott to resign. “Both Mark Scott and [University of Sydney chancellor] David Thodey should resign,” Dutton told radio 2GB. “If they had any shred of integrity, they would have resigned by now.”

With the conflict in the Middle East entering a new and even more dangerous phase, the accompanying culture wars about speech, flags and symbols will continue to intensify. Dutton’s assault on the University of Sydney’s leadership shows that universities are a target in the next federal election. Disliked by many on the right for their supposedly woke liberal tendencies, and decried on the left for their links to arms manufacturers and military research, universities are increasingly controversial in the community. Both major parties have sought to blame universities enrolling international students for the housing crisis. 

Attempting to seperate hate speech and racism from legitimate political protest puts universities in the position of arbitrating the speech claims of students and the community on one of the defining issues of our time. As Henderson and Dutton have clearly indicated, calls for a judicial inquiry into university antisemitism are inevitably also calls for stricter policing of anti-Israel and anti-war protest speech. As we’ve seen in the US, the likely result is tighter restrictions on students and academics criticising Israel or protesting the war.

Indeed, the crackdown on and monitoring of protests across campuses here is now playing out. Ironically, this chilling effect is precisely what Coalition politicians warned about in 2018 when they called for greater protections for free speech on campus.