Professor Jennifer Westacott is expected to appear before the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Integration on Thursday as part of its hearings in Melbourne. examine how universities respond to threats to Jewish students and scholars.
The following is part of his presentation.
I make this presentation in a personal capacity, drawing on my experience as chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, former chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, and as a patron of the Dor Foundation. I do not speak on behalf of any institution. I speak as an Australian, and a leader, who has watched, in horror, the revelation of something we took for granted: that Jewish Australians can live, study and work in safety and dignity.
I want to be clear about my personal reasons for speaking because I think they matter to what this commission needs to understand. My childhood was marked by poverty, times of family trouble, and violence here and there but very often. My father was an antisemite. I remember, as a small child, seeing a picture on television of two men in striped prison uniforms, hanging by their necks from the street. Of course I was very sad, because my father told me: “Don’t worry, that only happens to Jews.” I can never shake the look on their faces. Nor have I been able to shake the question of my own silence as a child and then as an adult. My fear and misunderstanding meant that even as I grew up, I was afraid to challenge his views.
My father’s views were, I understand now, common then, and remain so in some parts of our society today. The lesson I get from that is not just personal. Silence, increasing conformity, and the comfort of inaction are how hatred takes root. That is what happened after October 7, 2023, and it is something that this commission must help us never repeat.
No single university, no single government department, no single body, can be held responsible alone. This was the failure of the entire nation to understand, in real time, the gravity of what was happening and to respond with the urgency and moral clarity it demanded.
With important exceptions, our leaders did not get one page. Universities did not follow the same rules. Business, with some honorable exceptions, was largely quiet. Governments at the federal and state levels were slow to act with the required decision.
We allowed, through silence and through a failure of moral clarity, the legitimate grief and anger many Australians felt about the events in Gaza to be used as justification, or at least as cover, for non-Jewish language, posters, and acts of intimidation directed at Australian Jews that had nothing to do with the decisions of a foreign government. Holding Jewish Australians responsible for Israel’s actions is not a political commentary. It is racism, and it is the oldest and most persistent form.
Universities are naturally their places of contestation and debate. They should be. Free inquiry, conflict of ideas, and the right to protest are not only allowed on campuses; it is essential to the mission of the university. But free speech is a completely different concept from hate speech, and what happened on many Australian campuses was not free speech. They were hate speech: posters calling for the killing of Jews, songs calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, behavior intended to intimidate and instill fear in a specific group of people. That is not a contest of ideas. That is the deliberate targeting of people because of who they are.
Too many universities hid behind the concept of free speech to avoid taking action, and too many used academic freedom as a cover to tolerate what was offensive. The result was that Jewish students and staff were left scared, unsafe and unsupported in institutions that should be places of safety and learning for everyone. It is also worth noting that evidence suggests that Muslim students were among those who reported feeling unsafe on Australian universities during this period. The environment in which prejudice is rehabilitated is one in which no one is truly safe, and that is another reason why the failure to act decisively was so harmful and wrong.
I visited Bondi Beach in the days after the December attack with Jewish friends. It was a place of unparalleled sadness, a place that witnessed brutality and fear, and at the same time, incredible bravery from those who ran towards the gunfire. I thought of every Jewish Australian who had lived the last two years in fear and who deserved better from the country and the institutions that were meant to keep them safe.
I have spoken out against hatred because I know the cost of silence. I knew it as a child, watching my father’s hatred go unchallenged, and I refused to carry that silence into my professional life. I became the patron of the Dor Foundation, the Hebrew word for generation, because I believe that generational change is possible and necessary. That we can build a future in which anti-Semitism is not simply condoned, but is fully and permanently dismantled through education, institutional courage and true collective leadership.
Jennifer Westacott is chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, patron of the Dor Foundation, and former chief executive of the Business Council of Australia.
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