No Australian university has adequately defined antisemitism, and so none can be judged to have responded adequately to it, Greg Craven argues.
Defining antisemitism “represents a university’s precise, public, absolute, ongoing and active commitment to combatting” it, the former ACU Vice-Chancellor says.
He makes a case that all Australian universities have not done it, in his report for Jillian Segal, the national government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
Professor Craven’s original brief was to score each university’s individual actions, which he states is not possible, in the absence of definitions. And without such a “criterion for judgement, it is impossible to assess such operational matters as dispute and complaint handling and programs to cultivate awareness of antisemitism.”
He sets out a range of institutional failures to decline and failures to adopt, including;
- Symbolic definition: governing bodies adopt a statement, generally those drafted by Universities Australia or the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which have no “binding, practical or directive effect”
- Definitions not mandatory in policy/rule making
- Absorbing antisemitism in policies on racism
- “Discounting” antisemitism by reference to academic freedom and freedom of speech.
Professor Craven does not name “a very small number of Australian universities” with no definition of antisemitism but which do not state “a positive refusal” to adopt one. And, again without identification, he states three that, “appear to have positively declined” to endorse any definition. But he does name five, which “can properly be named as qualified examples for other institutions,” Uni Canberra, Swinburne U, Southern Cross U, Uni Southern Queensland and Charles Darwin U.
He proposes giving universities another go at producing “appropriate definitions of antisemitism,” after which compliance would be a matter for the Minister.
Last night, Universities Australia said, “the sector will carefully consider the report.”
The National Tertiary Education Union had not commented by deadline, but in March opposed the UA definition of antisemitism, warning of, “the potential for over-reach into actions and policies that undermine academic freedom and rights to freedom of expression.”