April 1 2026

Sydney University Staff for Palestine expresses its firm opposition to Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott’s decision to appoint a ‘special advisor’ on antisemitism. Antiracists, including Jewish anti-Zionists, have frequently criticised the exceptionalisation of antisemitism as ineffective and counterproductive — indeed, an expression of racist thinking itself. The creation of this advisory role is a clear instance of such exceptionalisation. The recent Australian Human Rights Commission report identified widespread racism in Australian universities, with the highest rates reported among those who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Jewish and Palestinian, and very high rates among people of Asian, African, Māori, Pasifika and Muslim backgrounds. In creating a unique special advisor role for antisemitism, the University has signalled that racism against Jewish people is being uniquely prioritised above other forms of discrimination.

But exceptionalism is not the only problem. Mark Scott is willing to allow the necessary fight against antisemitism to be hijacked by supporters of Israel. One of the special advisor’s main responsibilities will be to design and implement ‘antisemitism training’ that will be mandatory for ‘frontline’ staff at the university. This is an initiative of the federal government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, a dogged critic of genocide opponents, whose family’s substantial donations to the far-right, anti-immigrant ‘Advance’ organisation are on the public record. Segal has made it clear that this training will present Zionism as intrinsic to Jewish identity, a framing which immediately casts anti-Zionists, including Jewish ones, as antisemitic.

Our concern is heightened by the fact that the Vice-Chancellor has hand-picked Dr Michael Abrahams-Sprod for this position. Dr Abrahams-Sprod is a leading member of the pro-Israel Australian Academic Alliance against Antisemitism (‘5A’) network, which considers Palestine activism as antisemitic, and coordinates vexatious attacks on Palestine-supporting staff. It would have been impossible for Scott to appoint a more divisive or partisan figure, or to signal more clearly the depth of his opposition to the Palestine solidarity movement on campus.

The 5A network was established in the wake of October 7, 2023 as a mechanism to quash opposition on campus to Israel’s genocide. In lobbying for restrictions on pro-Palestine slogans, it has argued that the phrase ‘free Palestine’ is ‘inherently racist’. It has characterised the National Tertiary Education Union as a ‘driver’ of antisemitism, ‘actively contributing to the spreading of hate against Jewish people.’ It has been directly involved in attacks on Palestinian-Australian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. 

In Dr Abrahams-Sprod, Jillian Segal will have a willing ally for the implementation of her extraordinary attack on universities as sites of critique and free debate. In his capacity as 5A’s University of Sydney coordinator, Dr Abrahams-Sprod has claimed that most pro-Palestine activity at the University of Sydney in 2024 was antisemitic. It beggars belief that someone who holds such a view will now be elevated as an official arbiter of antisemitism at the university.

As Vice-Chancellor, Mark Scott has had ample opportunity to listen to, and consider, the arguments put forward by Palestinians and their supporters on campus: that criticism of Israel or Zionism is not antisemitic; that campaigning for the respect of international law and human rights is not antisemitic; that claims of ‘offence’ or ‘intimidation’ cannot override the freedom to oppose Israel’s genocide; that ‘safety’ must not be used as an excuse to curtail academic freedom or protest rights. He has heard these arguments so often that his persistent refusal to heed them means that only one conclusion is possible: Scott is indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians and more than willing to subordinate the integrity of the University of Sydney to a lobby for a state responsible for apartheid and genocide. 

Sydney University Staff for Palestine has repeatedly asserted its unconditional opposition to racism in all its guises, antisemitism included. For this reason, we unambiguously oppose any ‘training’ that exceptionalises antisemitism or presents anti-Zionism as antisemitic. There is a crisis of racism in universities. Dr Abrahams-Sprod’s appointment, and the antisemitism training he will oversee, will do nothing to alleviate this crisis and will only inflame divisions on campus. We call on Mark Scott to reverse this appointment, and to abolish the special advisor role.

Sydney Staff for Palestine express our unconditional horror at Sunday’s antisemitic attack at Bondi. We extend our deepest condolences to all those bereaved and grieving as a result of these crimes. We express our particular solidarity with all our Jewish colleagues, and to everyone traumatized by the events at Bondi, whatever their background or religion.

Our group was formed by Palestinian, Jewish, and other members of staff in response to the genocide unfolding in Palestine, to advocate non-violent tactics such as BDS. In that context, we note again the impossibility of combatting antisemitism without simultaneously fighting all forms of racism. Alongside our horror at Sunday’s gratuitous and criminal loss of life, we are deeply troubled at the prospect of heightened repression of civil liberties, and an anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic backlash.

We also note with alarm renewed calls to further erode freedom of speech and intellectual freedom at universities. Such restrictions have gone too far already. Astonishingly, the university’s current ‘lecture announcement’ policy prohibits academic staff from discussing Sunday’s attack in class. This is censorship pure and simple, as unjustified as it is counterproductive. Universities must be places where the most urgent issues of our society can be freely discussed.

Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, is abhorrent and has no place in our society or on our campus. We are committed to the struggle to stamp it out wherever it arises.

11am, 16 December 2025

When: Wednesday November 24, 18h (Sydney), 08h (Central European Time), 09h (Palestine)

Registration: https://bit.ly/2ZQ9Kp9

Sydney Staff for BDS is delighted to host Somdeep Sen (Roskilde University, Denmark) for an online talk on his recent book Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial (Cornell University Press, 2020).

In Decolonizing Palestine, Somdeep Sen counters the notion that liberation from colonization exists as a singular moment in history when the colonizer is ousted by the colonized. Against the background of the past and present of Israel’s project of settler colonialism that rejects the existence of Palestine (and Palestinian-ness), he considers the case of the Palestinian struggle for liberation from this condition as a complex psychological and empirical mix of the colonial and the postcolonial. Specifically, he examines the two seemingly contradictory, yet coexistent, anticolonial and postcolonial modes of politics adopted by Hamas following the organization’s unexpected victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election. Despite the expectations of experts, Hamas has persisted as both an armed resistance to Israeli settler colonial rule and as a governing body. Based on ethnographic material collected in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Israel, and Egypt, Decolonizing Palestine argues that the puzzle Hamas presents is not rooted in predicting the timing or process of its abandonment of either role. The challenge instead lies in explaining how and why it maintains both, and what this implies for the study of liberation movements and postcolonial studies more generally.

Somdeep Sen is Associate Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research focuses include settler colonialism with a particular focus on Israel-Palestine, urban politics in South Asia and the Middle East, race and racism in international relations, history of liberation movements and postcolonial studies. He is the author of Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial (Cornell University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11to Endless Wars (University of Georgia Press, 2021). His work has also appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, The Huffington Post, Open Democracy, Jacobin, The London Review of Books, The Palestine Chronicle and The Disorder of Things. 

A similar talk by Som was prevented from going ahead by Zionist pressure on the University of Glasgow (read the protest letter sent by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies to Glasgow University here). It’s a pleasure and privilege to be able to host Som for Sydney University Staff for BDS.

Wednesday October 6, 17-18h30 (Sydney Time)

How is the Prevent duty in England – the UK government’s ‘anti-radicalisation’ scheme – affecting freedom of speech, research and campaigning about Palestine justice at English Universities? Drawing on his field research, James Godfrey will discuss the combination of pressures on students and staff at universities in England in relation to teaching, researching and campaigning about Palestine. Despite these pressures, he continues to observe students and staff resisting in various ways. What lessons can be learnt in Australia from these experiences and strategies?

James Godfrey is a postgraduate researcher in Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and a visitor at the ANU, investigating the ‘Prevent duty’ in the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 and its impacts on campaigning and free speech re Israeli Occupied Palestine within universities in England. He has interviewed students, staff, staff of student organisations, members of Palestine solidarity organisations and Islamic Societies, and representatives from peak bodies. Since the 1980s, James has participated in organisations campaigning for social justice, locally and internationally, focussing since 2011 on justice for the Palestinian people. He is a spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which physically challenges the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. James has also worked as a trade union organiser in Sydney and London.

Time: Wednesday 6 October, 5pm (Sydney time)

Registration: https://bit.ly/3tGBKGD

Time: Tuesday June 15, 1pm (Sydney time)

Registration: https://bit.ly/3hTr9UW

The paper will look at the difficulty of teaching Palestine, in particular the Israel-Palestine conflict, in a range of classroom settings. Various myths about this conflict exist – its supposed complexity, its age-old status, its religiosity – that need to be addressed and dismantled before any headway can be made to reconfigure the terms we can use to engage with learning about this conflict in the classroom. This is not a unique to teaching Palestine, but when coupled with managing sensitivities and allegiances in the classroom can make for a challenging set of tutorials. Furthermore, the classroom in my experience in teaching this topic has been subject to external stakeholders who attempt to influence what is taught and what historical narrative is suitable. This paper will outline some of these challenges and ask what can be gleaned from such a fraught teaching situation. 

Jumana Bayeh is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on the diaspora cultures of the Arab world, and literary and cultural representations of the riot in the Middle East and beyond. She teaches various units that focus on the politics and history of the Middle East, from the early twentieth century to the present. The seminar is presented by Sydney University Staff for BDS, a group of Sydney University staff members supporting the institutional academic boycott.

Sydney Staff for BDS is pleased to host a talk by Saree Makdisi (UCLA).

Tolerance is a Graveyard: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

Time: April 23 1-2.30 pm (Sydney time)

Zoom registration: https://bit.ly/312SkmJ 

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles and a proponent of BDS, the campaign for justice for Palestinians through an end to Israeli apartheid. As well as his numerous works on literature and culture, Prof. Makdisi is author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. In this talk he will discuss the politics of Palestine liberation in the context of his forthcoming book, Tolerance is a Graveyard. The seminar is presented by Sydney Staff for BDS, a group of Sydney University staff members supporting the institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities. Everyone is welcome.