The Antisemitism Envoy's attack on Academic Freedom

The Australian Government appointed a "special envoy against antisemitism", Jillian Segal, who produced a plan. Some of its proposals are a serious threat to academic freedom:

"Key actions:
• The Envoy will develop and launch a university report card, assessing each university’s implementation of effective practices and standards to combat antisemitism, including complaints systems and best practice policies, as well as consideration of whether the campus/online environment is conducive to Jewish students and staff participating actively and equally in university life.
• The Envoy will work with government to enable government funding to be withheld, where possible, from universities, programs or individuals within universities that facilitate, enable or fail to act against antisemitism. Working with government and grant authorities, the Envoy will, where possible, establish that all public grants provided to university centres, academics or researchers can be subject to termination where the recipient engages in antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory or hateful speech or actions.
• A commission of inquiry into campus antisemitism, including the sources of funding for organised clusters of antisemitism, should be commissioned by the Federal Government if systemic problems remain in universities by the start of the 2026 academic year.
• Working with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency the Envoy will advocate to ensure that systemic action is taken to reverse a dangerous trajectory of normalised antisemitism in many university courses and campuses."

A private member's bill (apparently not to be proceeded with) introduced by Julian Leeser also threatens academic freedom. Section 6, "Matters for the Commissioner", includes: "to inquire whether Australian universities have ... (f) taken steps to ensure that antisemitic content is not included in course and teaching materials, or delivered during lectures, tutorials and other classes". This would mean that censors would examine teaching materials (and maybe academics’ publications?) for what they deem to be antisemitic content and would seek reports from students about what lecturers, tutors and other students said in class.

Censoring academic work will need some definition (or set of assumptions) about what counts as antisemitic.

Leeser's Bill (sec. 6.3.b) recommends the IHRA definition of antisemitism (which should properly be referred to as the “non-legally binding working definition”). The Special Envoy requires the IHRA definition : “The Envoy will work with state and federal governments to require the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to be used across all levels of government and public institutions to inform their practical understanding of antisemitism.”

The Universities Australia have not adopted the IHRA definition but have adopted their own. The UA definition assumes we know what will count as "discrimination, prejudice, harassment, exclusion, vilification". Jillian Segal commented: "I consider Universities Australia's working definition of antisemitism to be a positive step [i.e. a first step in what she regards as the right direction]. My preference remains that the International Holocaust Remembrance definition be adopted in its entirety". Clearly, she and others will try to get the Universities to be guided in recognising “discrimination, prejudice,” etc. by the IHRA definition.

The Australian Government, in Recommendation 1 of its response to the Special Envoy's Report, has said: "The Australian Government’s official definition of antisemitism is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition."

Recommendation 4 of the Government’s response seems to establish a framework for carrying out the Special Envoy's program without adequate safeguards for academic freedom.

It seems to me that the Jerusalem Declaration is to be preferred, and that Universities and other institutions should deal with all forms of racism and discrimination within the same framework, without allowing a particular ethnic group to exercise any special influence.

 
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