Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA

Australian Journal of Human Rights ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjhu20 Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA Lana Tatour To cite this article: Lana Tatour (13 Aug 2024): Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA, Australian Journal of Human Rights, DOI: 10.1080/1323238X.2024.2385504 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238X.2024.2385504 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 13 Aug 2024. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjhu20 AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238X.2024.2385504 CURRENT PERSPECTIVES Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA Lana Tatour School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This piece focuses on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and the campaigns to label Palestine scholarship, teaching, and activism on campuses as antisemitic, and their impact of on academic freedom and the rights of scholars and students. It places Australian universities in a larger transnational context and demonstrates, through a focus on the environment in which academics and students operate— especially in the aftermath of Israel’s 2023 War on Gaza—how the IHRA is a political tool used to censor speech on Palestine and shield Israel from criticism by labelling critical perspectives on Palestine as antisemitic. Received 16 April 2024 Accepted 11 July 2024 KEYWORDS Palestine; human rights; academic freedom; antiPalestinian racism; IHRA; higher education Academic freedom on Palestine has always been fragile. Scholars and students have long had to face racist campaigns targeted at them by Zionist groups, and to fight for a space for critical Palestine scholarship, teaching and activism. This fraught environment has impacted free speech, hiring and tenure processes, student activism, cancellation of events, and created a chilling effect and practices of self-censorship. The situation, however, has significantly worsened since 2016, when The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted a controversial working definition of antisemitism, known as the IHRA definition (hereafter, the IHRA).1 The IHRA has been developed as part of the ‘new antisemitism movement’ which expands the definition of antisemitism to include anti-Zionism and critique of the Israeli state. It draws on deliberate conflation between Judaism (religion) and Zionism (political ideology) and on the conflation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in order to censor public debates on Israel’s violations of international law, the colonial and racist nature of the Zionist project, and decolonisation and Palestinian liberation. The IHRA thus operates, Neve Gordon argues, as ‘a counterinsurgency tool’ and ‘an instrument used to protect the persistence of racial domination of Israeli Jews over Palestinians’.2 CONTACT Lana Tatour [email protected] 1 ‘Working Definition on Antisemitism’ (The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)) <https:// holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism> accessed 24 May 2024. 2 Neve Gordon, ‘Antisemitism and Zionism: The Internal Operations of the IHRA Definition’ [2024] Middle East Critique, <DOI: 10.1080/19436149.2024.2330821>, accessed 16 April 2024. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. 2 L. TATOUR The IHRA should be understood in the context of right-wing attacks on critical studies, including critical race theory, gender studies, queer studies and Indigenous studies. Even Kenneth S. Stern, the original drafter of the IHRA definition, has taken a stand against universities adopting it, saying that ‘rightwing Jewish groups took the “working definition” … and decided to weaponize it … complain[ing] about speakers, assigned texts and protests they said violated the definition’.3 Indeed, the IHRA has created an environment that enables scapegoating, intimidation, harassment, doxing and persecution by groups that launch well-orchestrated McCarthyist campaigns that target students and academics, including anti-Zionist Jews, and particularly Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and people of colour. The recent attacks on the Palestinian Australian scholar Randa Abdel-Fattah and the attempts to get her fired from her position at Macquarie University and strip her of the prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant demonstrate the violent atmosphere the IHRA has created.4 Our ability, as critical academics, to do our research, teaching, and public engagement is an ongoing battle, one that engages key human rights concerns. In the context of higher education, only a handful of universities in the United States have adopted the IHRA and none in Canada.5 In the United Kingdom, the Secretary of State for Education threatened in 2020 to withhold funding from universities who refuse to adopt the IHRA, leading 75% of the universities to adopt it.6 In Australia, so far and despite ongoing pressure by politicians and Zionist groups,7 only a handful of universities have adopted the IHRA including University of Melbourne, Monash, University of Wollongong, Macquarie University and University of Sunshine Coast. Other universities, like the Australian National University, Griffith University, James Cook University, University of Sydney, University of Adelaide and University of New South Wales announced that they will not be adopting the IHRA, while all other universities have not adopted it so far.8 It would be misleading, however, to assume that the IHRA impacts only institutions that have adopted it. As Muhannad Ayyash suggests, we need to assess the IHRA also 3 Kenneth S Stern quoted in Gordon (n 2) 3. See ‘Jewish Academics in Support of Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’ (Google Doc), <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/ 1FAIpQLSfV4NnF8yCip_fI_VUT9Ryl8wfTHYHjm7KCwEQw1JNM056iZQ/viewform> accessed 5 July 2024; See also Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, Parliament of Australia, Budget Estimates 2024-25 (6 June 2024). 5 In in the United States, as of May 2021, only 30 universities and colleges adopted the definition, and only one university adopted it in 2023. See ‘U.S. Campus Adoption of the Working Definition’ (American Jewish Committee) <https://www. ajc.org/us-campus-adoption-of-the-working-definition> accessed 16 April 2024; Jerusalem Post Staff, ‘Limited University Adoption of IHRA Working Definition, Despite Spike in Campus Activism’ (Jerusalem Post, 23 January 2024) <https:// www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-783280> accessed 16 April 2024. 6 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies and the European Legal Support Centre, Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom in UK Higher Education: The Adverse Impact of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism (Report, September 2023) <https://www.brismes.ac.uk/files/documents/Freedom%20of%20Speech%20and%20Academic%20Freedom%20in% 20UK%20Higher%20Education-BRISMES-ELSC.pdf> accessed 16 April 2024. 7 Angus Thompson, ‘Universities Under Pressure from MPs to Adopt Antisemitism Definition’ The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, 12 June 2024) <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/unis-targeted-in-bipartisan-push-to-defineantisemitism-20240611-p5jkx7.html> accessed 5 July 2024. 8 Jumana Bayeh and Nick Riemer, ‘Palestine Solidarity and Zionist Backlash in Australian Universities’ [2024] Middle East Critique <https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2024.2334147> accessed 16 April 2024; Caitlin Cassidy, ‘Australian Universities Split on Decision to Adopt Controversial Definition of Antisemitism’ The Guardian (Sydney, 6 February 2023) <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/06/australian-universities-split-on-decision-to-adoptcontroversial-definition-of-antisemitism> accessed 16 April 2024. 4 AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 3 considering its ‘ability to determine the contours of the conversation over Palestine and Israel’,9 and as this piece shows, the IHRA has created a McCarthyist landscape that impacts universities in the West, including in Australia, regardless of whether they have adopted the IHRA or not. This piece examines how the campaign to label Palestine scholarship, teaching, and activism on campuses as antisemitic has impacted academic freedom and the rights of scholars and students. It places Australian universities in a larger transnational context and demonstrates, through a focus on the environment in which academics and students operate—especially in the aftermath of Israel’s 2023 War on Gaza—how the IHRA is a political tool used to censor speech on Palestine and shield Israel from criticism by labelling critical perspectives on Palestine as antisemitic. A Palestine exception to freedom of speech and academic freedom Academic freedom is a core principle of higher education. It encompasses the rights of scholars, researchers and students to engage in the pursuit of knowledge, research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge without undue interference, censorship or reprisal. Academic freedom ensures that individuals have the autonomy to explore diverse perspectives, challenge established paradigms, and contribute to the advancement of society through critical inquiry and scholarship.10 This fundamental freedom is not only integral to the flourishing of intellectual environments but is also deeply intertwined with broader human rights principles. Protection of academic freedom extends beyond state interference and encompasses safeguarding against threats from nonstate actors, including civil society. While states bear the primary responsibility for upholding academic freedom, non-state actors, including right-wing groups, corporations and academic institutions, as well as states themselves, can be a threat to academic freedom. Increasingly, academic freedom is perceived as a human right grounded in international law, especially in light of the growing assault on academic freedom globally— including in the West—directed at dissidents, human rights defenders, and critical and radical scholars and scholarship. Articulating academic freedom as a human right, according to Balakrishnan Rajagopal, means that: ‘first, that protecting such a right does not depend on national legal systems, but on international law; and second, that transnational action, including that by international agencies, becomes legitimate for protecting such rights’.11 Under international law, Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) underscores the importance of academic freedom by enshrining the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Furthermore, academic freedom is a prerequisite for the protection of other human rights, especially the right to education (UDHR, Article 26).12 These rights are further protected by Article 19 on the right to freedom of expression of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 13 on 9 M. Muhannad Ayyash, ‘The Toxic Other: The Palestinian Critique and Debates About Race and Racism’ [2023] 49(6) Critical Sociology 957. 10 Conrad Russell, Academic Freedom (Routledge 2002). 11 Balakrishnan Rajagopal, ‘Academic Freedom as a Human Right: An Internationalist Perspective’ [2003] Academe: Journal of the American Association of University Professors 25, 27. 12 ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, General Assembly Resolution Res 217 A(III), adopted 10 December 1948 (UDHR). 4 L. TATOUR the right to education of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.13 While there is a tendency to treat academic freedom and freedom of expression as interchangeable, they are not the same despite being interlinked. As Judith Butler notes, ‘academic freedom implies a right to free inquiry within the academic institution, but also an obligation to preserving the institution as a site where freedom of inquiry can and does take place, free of intervention, and censorship’.14 This is an important distinction since academic freedom does not imply a commitment to absolute freedom of expression and speech, which as Gavan Titley has demonstrated, is often weaponised by the right as ‘an opportunistic political tactic’ to fight antiracism and to justify racism and hate speech.15 This is why it is important to insist on linking academic freedom, as Butler suggests, to ideals of human freedom, whereby academic freedom should be leveraged not only to ‘refuse political interference in research and teaching, but also to establish forms of inquiry that have as their central aim the understanding of the principles of freedom, justice, human dignity, and solidarity’.16 The IHRA is a curious case in relation to academic freedom, racism and antiracism. While presenting itself as an antiracist instrument that aims to protect Jewish academics and students on campuses from antisemitism, in practice the IHRA is a political tool leveraged to censor critical voices and knowledge on Palestine; it is more concerned with criticism of Israel than, as Antony Lerman, former head of the Jewish Congress’s Institute of Jewish Affairs, argues, with ‘virulent forms of antisemitism now on the rise’ and white supremacy.17 The focus on criticism of Israel as the barometer for antisemitism is evident in the IHRA’s eleven illustrative examples of antisemitism, of which seven focus on Israel with the aim to shield Israel from criticism by narrowing the space of what constitute permissible speech. According to the IHRA, ‘claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour’ is antisemitic, so is ‘applying double standards [to Israel] by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’.18 This, Human Rights Watch points out, renders it ‘antisemitic to evaluate Israel as anything but a democracy’.19 For example, any suggestions that Israel is an apartheid racial state is thus deemed antisemitic—despite the consensus in the human rights community that Israel is practicing the crime of apartheid as determined by several UN Special Rapporteurs and a host of human rights organisations.20 13 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976) 999 UNTS 171 (ICCPR); International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976) 993 UNTS 3 (ICESCR). 14 Judith Butler, ‘Academic Freedom and the Critical Task of the University’ [2017] 14(6) Globalizations 857. 15 Gavan Titley, ‘How ‘Freedom of Speech’ is Weaponized to Fight Antiracism’ Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, 20 June 2021) <https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-20/free-speech-racism-digital-age> accessed 16 April 2024; Gavan Titley, Is Free Speech Racist? (Polity 2020). 16 Butler (n 15) 859. 17 128 Scholars Warn: Don’t Trap the United Nations in a Vague and Weaponized Definition of Antisemitism (Document, 3 November 2022) <https://media.euobserver.com/9e86df02ddf67c6046d190b65e4380df.pdf> accessed 16 April 2024. 18 IHRA (n 1). 19 ‘Human Rights Watch Letter to Co-Sponsors of Proposed ABA Resolution 514 on Antisemitism’ (Human Rights Watch, 26 January 2023) <https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/26/human-rights-watch-letter-co-sponsors-proposed-abaresolution-514-antisemitism> accessed 16 April 2024. 20 ‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’ (Al-Haq, 2022) <https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20931.html> accessed 16 April 2014; ‘Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity’ (Amnesty International, 2022) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against- AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 5 The IHRA produces what academics and civil rights organisations have termed as the ‘Palestine exception to free speech’ and ‘the Palestine exception to academic freedom’.21 It is used to label as racist critical analyses of Israel that centre settler colonialism, race and racism, and anticolonialism/decoloniality. In a February 2024 report, The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) raised concerns about a growing trend of delegitimising decolonial and anticolonial approaches to the study of Israel and Palestine, with the analytical framework of settler colonialism being conflated ‘with support of terrorism and/or antisemitism’.22 We already see the ramifications of this conflation. In my own workplace, the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Zionist students complained, on multiple occasions, about the inclusion of a foundational text in settler colonial studies by Patrick Wolfe ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, into the reading list of a second-year core course in politics and international relations. They claimed that the text is antisemitic because it refers to Israel and Zionism as a settler colonial project, with some students citing the IHRA to request that the text be removed from the reading list.23 The attempts to censor critical research, speech and activism on Palestine result, Ayyash argues, in the toxification of Palestinian critique, knowledge and epistemology by presenting it as ‘rooted in an antisemitic disposition’.24 Somdeep Sen emphasises that the IHRA is not merely about censorship, but is part of and a form of settler colonial erasure. In his words, the IHRA definition also seeks to circumscribe any attempt to recognize the legitimacy, existence, and persistence of the Palestinian national cause—not least since any recognition of the existence of Palestine and Palestinian-ness would undermine the core founding myth of the State of Israel that proclaims that it was built on terra nullius.25 Put differently, the IHRA constitutes a colonial instrument and a form of anti-Palestinian racism; ‘It is a racism that cloaks itself in anti-racism’26 and an instrument of colonial erasure.27 The IHRA has come to function, according to Rebecca Ruth Gould, as ‘quasi-law, in which capacity it exercises the de facto authority of the law, without having acquired legal legitimacy’.28 E. Tendayi Achiume, the former UN Special Rapporteur on palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/> accessed 16 April 2014; United Nations Human Rights Council. 2022. ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’. A/HRC/49/87, March 21. 21 Malaka Shwaikh and Rebecca Ruth Gould, ‘The Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom: Intertwined Stories from the Frontlines of UK-Based Palestine Activism’ [2020] 42(4) Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 752; ‘The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US’ (Palestine Legal, September 2015) <https://static1. squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/560c2e0ae4b083d9c363801d/1443638794172/Palestine +Exception+Report+Final.pdf> accessed 16 April 2024. 22 ‘BRISMES Statement on Settler Colonialism, Decolonisation and Antisemitism’ (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 19 February 2024) <https://www.brismes.ac.uk/news/brismes-statement-on-settler-colonialismdecolonisation-and-antisemitism> accessed 16 April 2024. 23 William Clapton, ‘Decolonising Politics and International Relations Classrooms: Reflections from the “Field”’ [2023] 69 Australian Journal of Politics and History 442. 24 Ayyash (n 9) 954. 25 Somdeep Sen, ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Academic Censorship, and the Politics of Settler Colonial Erasure’ in Alaa Tartir, Timothy Seidel and Tariq Dana (eds), Resisting Domination in Palestine: Mechanisms and Techniques of Control, Coloniality, and Settler Colonialism (I.B. Tauris 2024) 179. 26 Justin Podur quoted in Ayyash (n 9) 957. 27 Sen (n 26). 28 Rebecca Ruth Gould, ‘Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech’ [2022] 18(1) Law, Culture and the Humanities 153. 6 L. TATOUR Contemporary Forms of Racism, cautioned against the IHRA’s ‘soft law status’ and its ‘de facto influence on the policy and practice of governments and private actors has contributed to violations of the human rights of freedom of expression, assembly and political participation’. In the context of universities, the IHRA has limited freedom of speech and academic freedom by interfering in hiring processes, firing academics, suspending staff and students, and suppressing student activism. A report by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) and the BRISMES on the impact of the IHRA on higher education in the UK has found that out of 40 cases reported to the ELSC, in all cases, except for two cases that are yet-to-be-determined, accusations of antisemitism were rejected. The report also documents ‘the cancellation of events or the imposition of spurious conditions on the formats of events’.29 Jumana Bayeh and Nick Riemer document a similar trend in Australian universities, where Zionists regularly complain against scholars critical of Israel and events on Palestine and student activism. They note that like in the UK ‘these accusations are regularly found to be baseless, but the process of investigating them ties up the staff concerned, as well as university managements themselves, in protracted and unwelcome bureaucratic obstruction’.30 Academic freedom and Israel’s war on Gaza In October 2023, Israel launched a war on Gaza—a war described by the International Court of Justice as ‘plausible’ genocide31—resulting, at the time of writing, in killing tens of thousands of civilians, including over 15,000 children, displacing over 85% of population, obliterating the health sector, starving and dehydrating an entire population, executing civilians, assassinating journalists, doctors and academics, carpet bombing most of Gaza, and destroying homes, schools, universities, libraries, bakeries, mosques, churches, municipality buildings, cultural heritage sites, water wells and archives.32 Israel’s 2023 war on Gaza was a moment to speak up and act, prompting academics and students to organise teach-ins, public talks, rallies, vigils, walkouts and reading groups on Palestine. Testimony from staff and students evidence the fact that the environment for campus activism or work on Palestine has become especially volatile after 7 October 2023. By creating a mechanism for labelling critique of Israel as antisemitism, the IHRA impacts not only universities that adopted it but the entire sector, including in Australia. The vice-president at the BRISMES and chair of its committee on academic freedom, Neve Gordon, states that in addition to suspension of student groups, cancellation of events and censorship on campuses, the chilling effect is real: I’m getting phone calls from friends in different universities in different countries saying that they want to cancel their Israel-Palestine course for next semester because they’re afraid that things that they will say in class can be interpreted by students as antisemitic.33 29 BRISMES and ELSC (n 6). Bayeh and Riemer (n 8) 6–7. ‘Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)’ (International Court of Justice) <https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192>. 32 For ongoing updates on number of killed, missing, injured and destruction of infrastructure, see ‘Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker’ (Al Jazeera) <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-warin-maps-and-charts-live-tracker> accessed 26 April 2024. 33 Gordon quoted in Gemma Ware, ‘Israel-Gaza War is Having a Chilling Effect on Academic Freedom – Podcast’ (The Conversation, 19 December 2023) <https://theconversation.com/israel-gaza-war-is-having-a-chilling-effect-on-academicfreedom-podcast-219926> accessed 16 April 2024. 30 31 AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 7 I have received similar calls from academics in Australia who teach Middle East courses and are vulnerable to attacks. We often tend to focus on the more public cases that result in investigations, firing, or suspension of academics and students, but we less document the mundane every-day experience of scholars and students active on Palestine that do not necessarily result in blatant censorship but nonetheless reflect the environment of the Palestine exception in which we operate. This is why documenting the situation on our campuses is important for understanding the challenges we face. Before and since October 7, students and academics have been sharing with me stories and experiences of censorship, harassment by university administrations, colleagues and students, of silencing, of complaints that accuse them of antisemitism, and racist incidents in the classroom—stories that I am not in a position to share. I can, however, attest to their severity. What I can share is some of the experiences I had as a Palestinian scholar involved in co-organising events on Palestine at UNSW, where I work, and in the context of academic associations. These are a fraction of the experiences of academics and students involved in Palestine work in the higher-education sector in Australia. These are not the worse stories, but rather the ones I can share. The more serious incidents of violations of academic freedom and of targeting academics and students remain untold because they could impact those involved and put their careers at a risk. While none of the events I was involved in organising were cancelled, they also did not run free of interruptions, harassment and intimidation and were subject to complaints by Zionist staff, students and groups. While the complaints against events did not necessarily explicitly refer to the IHRA, they nonetheless invoked the IHRA logic in that they draw on the claim that critical discussion of Israel and any critique of its political structure might amount to antisemitism and therefore should be subject to scrutiny and censorship. When we plan events on Palestine, we work with anticipation of complaints, attempts to cancel and censor, and interruptions. We are not paranoid. In 2015, Zionist academics demanded that the Law Faculty at UNSW cancel a conference, ‘Law Rights and Resistance in Occupied Palestine’, organised by a group of HDR students. This request faced a pushback by other academics who asked to protect the academic freedom of their students, and the conference was not cancelled. This ordeal, however, took a toll on the students who were starting their academic careers. Knowing that academics were involved in attempts of censorship led the organisers, all of them students of colour, to feel unsafe. Unfortunately, our universities and faculties allow the environment where Zionist staff and students feel emboldened to make complaints on academic events. In November 2023, when we organised a high-profile in conversation event with Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, hosted by UNSW Centre for Criminology, Law and Justice and led by Dr Noam Peleg, we knew it would be treated as controversial. Its treatment as such was in contrast to the usual practice of law faculties to celebrate the opportunity to host high-profile U.N. speakers. While the event went ahead, concerns and complaints about the event were made before it even took place. A hostile environment led the organisers to cancel a planned reception upon the recommendation of campus security, and Albanese had campus security personnel with her during her time on campus. Towards the end, a student accused Ms. Albanese of antisemitism and raised his voice on Dr Peleg, a 8 L. TATOUR Jewish academic, that he should be ashamed of bringing an antisemitic speaker to campus. Campus security opted to escort the harasser out of the room. A teach-in organised together with students in November 2023 at UNSW, also resulted in the intervention of campus security after a Zionist attendee took out his phone, placed it on a stand, and was ready to film the event despite requests not to record the event for the safety of panellists and students. Likewise, a panel about ‘Gaza and International Law’ that was held as part of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand annual meeting in December 2023 received several complaints to the conference organisers once the programme was announced.34 It was suggested that the panel was ‘unbalanced’—an allegation often levelled at Palestine-related events—even though the three speakers were experts in their respective fields. The demand for balance is racialised. There are many academic forums that take a critical perspective on human rights and other issues that are not met with demands for ‘balance.’ Here balance is used as codeword to paint critical perspectives on Palestine as illegitimate, and to claim that critical perspectives can be allowed only if Zionist perspectives are part of the discussion. They cannot exist on their own. Balance, as Jacqueline Rose has argued, is a ‘corrupt’ term ‘in an unbalanced world … the demand for ‘balance’ is made only when you clash with the official position or are seen to be on the wrong side of a debate, never when your views are welcome’.35 Conclusion The racial logic of the IHRA that conflates calls for justice for Palestine with antisemitism, and the McCarthyist environment it has created, is further demonstrated in the recent responses to and the handling of student encampments on our campuses. Inspired by the global student solidarity movement for Palestinian liberation, eleven encampments have been recorded across Australia, demanding that universities divest from companies that benefit from the genocide of Palestinians and boycott Israeli universities and institutions. This immediately triggered an orchestrated right-wing campaign calling the encampments antisemitic and Nazi and labelling the students as terrorism supporters and terrorists.36 Rather than focusing on the students’ demands, accusations of antisemitism dominated much of the public conversation in the media, by politicians, and in universities about the legitimacy of the encampments. University chiefs rushed to seek advice from the Attorney General, rather than their own Middle East academic experts, on whether the liberationist chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and the use of the word ‘intifada’ violated the Race Discrimination Act, further demonstrating capitulation to right-wing pressure.37 Likewise, the government intends to appoint 34 Email evidence on file with the author. I came to the text of Jacqueline Rose through the tweets of Louise Adler, the director of the Adelaide Writers Festival. I thank her. Jacqueline Rose, ‘I am a Knife’ (London Review of Books, 22 February 2018) < https://www.lrb.co.uk/thepaper/v40/n04/jacqueline-rose/i-am-a-knife> accessed 16 April 2024. 36 See post by the Australian Jewish Association (X.com, 7 May 2024) <https://x.com/AustralianJA/status/ 1787695259184718052> accessed 24 May 2024. 37 David Crowe, ‘University chiefs seek federal advice on ‘intifada’ calls’ Sydney Morning Herald, (Sydney 9 May 2024) <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/university-chiefs-seek-federal-advice-on-intifada-calls-20240509-p5igpy. html> accessed 24 May 2024. 35 AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 9 special envoys for antisemitism and Islamophobia,38 and the Australian Human Rights Commission is leading an anti-racism study in universities.39 We have the duty to ensure that there is no Palestine exception to freedom of speech and academic freedom on our campuses. The encampments and the ongoing violations of the rights of students to freedom of speech and assembly—which has included in Australia the suspension, expulsion and investigation of students, referral of students for police investigations, and a senate hearing40—further heighten the need to insist on talking about academic freedom in human rights terms. Indeed, at the time of writing, Australian universities have refrained from bringing police to dismantle the encampments as in the US and some places in Europe, but we should refuse the logic suggesting that avoiding a violent police crackdown on student protests is the bar to which we should hold universities accountable. Being able to exercise academic freedom and freedom of expression on our campuses is the bare minimum, not the end goal. Student solidarity with Palestine teaches us that the struggle is broader than that; it is about decolonisation, liberation and a world free of racism. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes on contributor Lana Tatour is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social at the University of New South Wales. Her co-edited book, Race and the Question of Palestine, is forthcoming with Stanford University Press in 2025. 38 Sharri Markson, ‘Government to Announce Special Enjoys for Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’ (Sky News, 9 April 2024) <https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/sharri-markson/government-to-announces-special-envoys-for-antisemitismand-islamophobia/video/42ce18afff61be015a57bce16f1c56cf> accessed 24 May 2024. 39 ‘Commission to Lead Historic Anti-racism Study into Universities’ (Australian Human Rights Commission, 15 May 2024) <https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/commission-lead-historic-anti-racism-study-universities> accessed 24 May 2024. 40 Senate Estimates (n 4).