Gaza, the Zionist Lobby and the University of Sydney

Even in the rarified Australian political environment, it should be clear that the University of Sydney will be one the last places to expect any sensible academic discussion or debate on the Middle East wars, all of which have Palestine and the Israelis at their centre.

The presence of the Israeli lobby at Australia’s oldest university is etched into the skyline in the form of the Susan Wakil Building, the result of a large donation from Isaac and Susan Wakil, Jewish billionaires who were also fervent supporters of “Israel”. In addition to their donations to the Medical Faculty, the Wakils funded “Insight into Israel” tours for community leaders, including those from the major political parties.

The Australian state and its financialised oligarchy, which also controls the corporate media, switched its loyal “security” relationship from Britain to Washington during the Second World War, and that has pre-determined most of Australian foreign policy and engagement in imperial wars ever since. Given that “Israel” was created as an Anglo-American colony and an agent of influence in the ‘Middle East’, the Australian government has remained a subordinate sponsor of the Apartheid Israeli regime which is, after all, a similar sort of settler-colonial state.

Yet the particular intractable problem of pro-“Israel” bias at the University of Sydney (USyd) is the embedded Zionist lobby, though its hand is not always visible. This lobby is active, usually behind the scenes, when it comes to repression of staff and student comments on Palestine. Its financial weight is supplemented by aggressive corporate media allies, which often provide the frontline of ideological attack. Zionist influence has been hidden, and is in some respects unnecessary, as much of the Australian elite remains so captured by US exceptionalism that they regard the great crimes committed by Israelis in Palestine as some sort of natural prerogative of Big Brother and its agents.

None in the Australian elite, for example, raised a voice against Australian involvement in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the dirty wars on Libya, Syria, and Yemen. It is a logical complement that, actively or passively, these elites back the latest genocide in Gaza.

The problem for the lobby is that most Australian youth do not see it that way. The live-streamed genocide in Gaza has fomented such discontent and rebellion, including the April-June 2024 Gaza encampment at the University, that it extracted a temporary and grudging toleration. This was despite the fact that one local Zionist group, the Australian Jewish Association, referred to student actions as ‘Hitler Youth’ rallies and made a call “for all Jewish donors to cut all funds from the University of Sydney”. That did not happen. The students were also upset that the University of Sydney has been linked to major weapons manufacturers, including those which arm the Israelis.

Despite Zionist objections, USyd managers were forced to tolerate the encampment for some weeks, because of huge revulsion at the ongoing Gaza genocide. However, soon after the camp was disbanded, managers rapidly enacted “draconian” regulations to make sure nothing like it would re-appear. Although there was a semblance of consultation with students over links to the weapons industry, managers closed the door on any possible boycott of the Israeli regime. Using false moral equivalence and pseudo ‘freedom of speech and academic freedom’ arguments, Vice Chancellor Mark Scott vowed he would “not restrict student exchanges, academic partnerships or institutional relationships with any country or industry”. Yet there was only one country in line for a boycott, the Israeli regime, as recommended by UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, in compliance with the prevention elements of the Genocide Convention and following the “bitter fruits” of impunity.

USyd managers were never comfortable with my work on war and intervention, in recent years. Fifteen years ago I published a critique of the creation at USyd of a US Studies Centre, funded by Canberra to repair the poor image of the USA after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When I returned from a visit to Syria in January 2014, much of the corporate media abused me and trolled the University of Sydney. Provost Garton would later pretend that he had defended my freedom of movement and speech, while calling me “naïve”. In fact he wanted to hold me at arm’s length from the University. Because of his backhand comment, I held a seminar for students at in March titled “Why I went to Syria”, the principal message of which was: “best not to criticize what you don’t understand”. Later, when my book The Dirty War on Syria was published in ten languages, there was no word of congratulations from my School or Faculty, which often reports on simple media interviews over someone’s new article.

After the Syria book I began to do literally hundreds of media interviews, none of which were mentioned in USyd publications. US, Australian, and Israeli funding and media trolling cripples the sensibilities of corporate university managers. It was just a matter of time before they started to turn their political distaste into fake ethical “misconduct” allegations. No amount of evidence or explanation can shift those captured by contemporary war propaganda; and every Middle East war has been linked to the Israeli colony.

Western academia, in general, is conditioned by imperial ideology, to cover criminal interventions and to only speak of independent states as “failed” or “authoritarian” regimes, needing “humanitarian intervention” under fake pretexts like “the responsibility to protect”. As there were so few opportunities for young academics to publish anti-colonial and self-determination themes, in 2017 a group of us formed an independent body the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. It is not affiliated to any other body, and runs a virtual library, publishing occasional research papers.

Anyway, why do University managers so strongly defend the Israelis, what role does the Zionist lobby play at Australia’s oldest university, including in canceling and disciplining dissident staff and students? The following are my findings and reflections, gathered during the course of a decade of confrontation followed by five years of legal proceedings to contest my unfair dismissal from the University, in 2019, for offending the Israelis and their supporters and for disobeying secret censorship orders. I will discuss the lobby, the legal charades of my case, and some general lessons.

1. The Zionist lobby and the Corporate University

The combination of the corporate university (where collegiality has been replaced by corporate autocrats) and the Zionist lobby is a toxic mix which spawns corruption and criminality, not least the international crime of propaganda for war.

The corporate university has systematically destroyed traditional notions of public interest, inviting conflicts of interest and damaging intellectual freedom, while presenting a shallow veneer of liberal values. In January 2019, the University of Sydney boasted more than one billion dollars had been raised from private sources, “the largest philanthropic campaign in Australian history”; yet there was no systematic public listing of these funds. Who knows where they have gone? We do know that USyd has a detailed “performance bonus plan” for all senior managers, and there can be no doubt that fund raising is an important part of their performance indicators. Unaccountable private fund raising has been linked to the personal benefit of managers; could there be a better basis for corruption?

When it comes to the Zionist lobby, the first thing to notice is that only a few of these entities are tagged as ‘Zionist’ or ‘Israeli’, they are more often called ‘Jewish’. This is line with the Zionist strategy of linking its colonial project with Jewish people and then hiding behind claims of “antisemitism” when the regime comes under fire. This ‘playing the victim’ tactic was called a “trick” by former Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni. “Well it’s a trick we always use it, when in Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the holocaust. When in this country (the USA) people are criticizing, well then they are anti-Semitic.” However, we should observe that the terms Jews and Israelis have distinct meanings, in the Western and Arab worlds.

In Australia, the Zionist lobby is deeply entrenched in the Jewish community, so that Jewish schools for example, “put Israel, uncritically, devotionally, on the curriculum and into school culture.” However, this experience is contradicted at university, when those same students “enter an alternative universe in which Israel is understood to be the oppressor and the Palestinians their victims”. The shock of this contradiction leads to claims that universities are not “safe spaces” for Jewish students, as privileged Zionist ideas are neither accepted nor welcome.

Perhaps the most egregious conflation of Zionist colonial ideas with Jewish people comes from the “working definition of antisemitism” by the poorly named International Holocaust Remembrance Association. That declaration and its examples mostly define antisemitism (a Eurocentric term for anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination) as criticism of the Israeli colony. That IHRA ‘working definition’ has even been rejected by Jewish scholars on antisemitism and replaced with a ‘Jerusalem declaration‘. As the scholar Norman Finkelstein said, it is hard to imagine a worse way to ‘remember’ the Nazi Holocaust than by using fake antisemitism ideas as a tool to defend Israeli crimes and justify a genocide inflicted on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Columbia University in New York, with similarly high levels of Zionist investment to those of USyd, moved to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, after the deliberations of a task force said to be stacked with pro-Israelis. Zionist influence on campus and in politics in the USA is scrutinised by a group called AIPAC Tracker, which is able to place dollar payments for each politician by the key US-Israel lobby group AIPAC. Recently, several senior Columbia academics were dismissed for perceived ‘antisemitism’ in emails in which they seemed to complain mainly about Israeli crimes and the influence of the Zionist lobby.

The most influential, albeit disguised Zionist body at the University of Sydney seems to be the Fund for Jewish Higher Education (FJHE), partly funded by the Wakils. On Susan Wakil’s death in 2018, the Fund’s chairman, Peter Wertheim, praised the Wakils as “wonderfully generous benefactors … [whose] support for the Fund for Jewish Higher Education has made a significant contribution to tertiary-level Jewish studies and teacher training at the University of Sydney.” Yet, as I discovered through a GIPA (freedom of information) application in 2020, the contributions of the FJHE to USyd’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) far exceeded any such teaching.

The FJHE has, over many years, contributed millions of dollars to FASS, it gives around half a million dollars per year, with annual contributions peaking at $819,000 in 2019. These amounts are way out of proportion to the nominal beneficiaries of Hebrew, Biblical, Jewish and Holocaust Studies. With about 10 academic staff (not all full time) that department represents less than 2% of the 700 or so academic staff in FASS.

Regular contributions from the FJHE have been supplemented by facilitated bequests, such as large grants from the Wakils and the two million dollar estate gift by the late Ann Kirby-Plotke, who indicated her wish to support the areas of “Hebrew, Jewish civilization and subjects associated with Judaism”. It is inconceivable that all these moneys have been used for a tiny part of FASS teaching activities. Where they have been used is an open question.

The key Liaison person between USyd and the FJHE was Suzanne Rutland, a former academic who, on her retirement in 2015 was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor by the then Provost Stephen Garton. He praised her contributions to “interfaith dialogue” and to “tolerance and understanding”. Yet Rutland is one of those Zionist extremists who claims student chants of “Free Palestine” are the call for a new genocide against the Jewish people.

In that same year 2015, Suzanne Rutland invited British soldier Richard Kemp to USyd to justify the crimes of the Israeli military in its 2014 Gaza massacre, which killed over 2,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

According to the Times of Israel, Kemp was to give a lecture about “ethical dilemmas of military tactics and dealing with non-state armed groups”. To Rutland’s chagrin, students disrupted and shut down Kemp’s talk. Provost Garton, who would in 2018 evict me from my Senior Lecturer position at USyd for offending the Israelis, said at that time, in support of Rutland and by reference to the Kemp issue, “academic freedom requires respect even when we passionately disagree. Disrupting the free exchange of ideas is not academic freedom…it is hypocrisy.” Garton awarded the title of Professor Emerita to Rutland “in recognition of her wonderful contribution to the university.” He did not mention her role as a conduit of funds to FASS, nor the World Zionist Organization, parent body of the FJHE.

In her online CV, which was redacted on the USyd website for some years, Suzanne Rutland cited one of her responsibilities as “Chair of the National Advisory Committee on Jewish Higher Education for Australia, for the World Zionist Organization, from 1995-1999”, as well as a member of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) and “Honorary Secretary and Academic Chair of the Joint Committee for Jewish Higher Education” (see screenshot below).

The JBD, with support from Wakil Foundation money, has run tours to “Israel” for various community leaders, including members of both major political parties. These tours complement those of AIJAC (Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council), which in 2018 was the largest single foreign funder of Australian MPs’ overseas travel. That is, there have been more externally funded politicians’ trips to Israel than to either the USA or China.

The World Zionist Organization (WZO), created in 1897, is one of the founding bodies of the Israeli regime, alongside the Jewish Agency. Its mission statement includes “promoting Zionism & the Zionist idea and the Zionist enterprise through Israel Education as vital and positive elements of contemporary Jewish life … expanding Zionist education … settling the land, and combating Anti-Semitism.” The WZO has a large number of sub-branches and “concentrates on work in the Diaspora and that relating to Diaspora Jewry: Jewish education, work with youth and so forth.”

I published this information about the FJHE/WZO funding for USyd online in 2020, and the student paper Honi Soit followed up with its own article, which also touched on the Israeli funding. This article was immediately attacked by local Zionists, claiming that the Fund for Jewish Higher Education had no connection with the World Zionist Organization. Probably on legal advice, Honi Soit amended its article to add this humiliating retraction:

“The article ‘NTEU appeals Tim Anderson Federal Court ruling’, originally published on January 21, 2021, asserted that the Fund for Jewish Higher Education (FJHE), an Australian charity registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, is “a sub-branch of the Israeli World Zionist Organisation”. This statement was false. Accordingly, the article was amended online on January 25 by deleting the references to the FJHE. The FJHE has no association with the Israeli World Zionist Organisation. It provides funding to support language programs in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical, and Jewish Studies and teacher training in the School of Languages and Cultures. Honi unreservedly apologises to everyone associated with the FJHE, and to Jewish students and the Jewish community.”

Yet the original information was correct, as seen in the excerpt from Suzanne Rutland’s 2019 online CV, and has been confirmed by restoration of that online CV in 2024. In other words, the FJHE fed false information to Honi Soit, to mislead students about Israeli influence on campus.

The Joint Committee for Jewish Higher Education, tagged on large USyd donations since at least 2012, was referred to in the disclosed 2017-2020 donations as the ‘Fund for Jewish Higher Education’. Given Dr Rutland’s stated links to both the ‘Committee on Jewish Education for Australia’ (for the World Zionist Organization) and the ‘Joint Committee for Jewish Higher Education’, it seems clear that they are versions of the same thing. In other words, this Fund is the same network which provides the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences with more than half a million dollars each year. But the secretive Zionist funders of Australia’s oldest university are covering their tracks.

Israeli lobbyist Suzanne Rutland, who presents as simply a retired academic supporting Jewish and Hebrew studies, told Australian television that her son’s dog had been terrified by ‘Palestinian rockets’ during one of the Israeli assaults on Gaza. She said her Australian-Israeli son Benjamin Naftali Rutland worked for the Red Cross; she did not say he was also a commander in the Israeli military, nor that she was a conduit of Israeli funds to Australia’s oldest university.

Of the Israeli massacres in Gaza in 2008 Captain Benjamin Rutland, then “a senior IDF spokesman”, told The Age: “The majority of the casualties have been uniform-wearing members of the Hamas terror organisation responsible for attacks on Israel.” In fact, UN and other independent sources have repeatedly confirmed that most of the Palestinian victims of the Israeli massacres in Gaza (in 2008, 2014, and 2023-2024) are civilians, many of them children. This cloak of dishonesty, posing as victims while presenting naked racism as ‘countering antisemitism’ is typical of the Zionist lobby.

The main targets of the lobby worldwide have been in the key sponsor nations Britain and the USA, where many academics, journalists, and politicians have come under fire for exposing the crimes of the Israeli regime.

A Guardian article cites several British academics on the problem of university managers trying to “silence academics on social media”, which is said to be part of a tension between the corporate university and social media, where “on the one hand unis are pushing their staff to be more active online … but when that individual voice is in conflict with the official brand it creates a tension … [over] brand protection”. The corporate media has discovered that it can use this tension to goad management to move against certain academics.

A key target of the lobby in the UK was former British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was deposed after a long and dishonest campaign which falsely smeared him as anti-Jewish. More recently in the USA, the Zionist groups AIPAC and the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMI) led the charge to remove Congressman Jamaal Bowman from the Democrat primaries, after Bowman criticised the Gaza massacres. APIAC was said to have spent $15 million in its campaign to remove Bowman and replace him with a pro-Israel candidate.

Another Zionist group in the USA, under the guise of ‘protecting Jewish students,’ branded as ‘biased’ more than 200 academics who have supported boycotts against “Israel”. Academics and teachers have been hounded from their positions in the USA, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand because of their comments on “Israel”, including those who raised legitimate academic questions about “ethno-nationalist settler colonialism” and of “victims becoming perpetrators”.

That campaign has also been directed at Jewish writers, some of whom have hit back, affirming that “unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism [are used to] cover up Israeli apartheid”. In 2019, 60 Jewish and Israeli academics condemned the German parliament for its attempts to equate the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement with anti-Semitism. This cancellation campaign extended to Israeli scholars who criticised the Israeli regime. In 2024, Israeli American Holocaust scholar Raz Segal had his job offer rescinded to lead the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies after board members heard he had characterized the 2023-2024 Israeli assault on Gaza as a “textbook case of genocide.”

A 2017 letter signed by more than 200 British academics complained of the “Israel” lobby’s repeated attempts to link academic criticism of “Israel”, and support for the Palestinian people, with anti-Semitism. These moves were said to be “outrageous interferences with free expression” and “direct attacks on academic freedom”. The group said “we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about anti-Semitism”. This constant interference in free speech and academic debate is no doubt responsible for the very poor understandings of the crimes of the Apartheid Israel regime, especially in Western countries.

In Australia, what I call the colonial media (those that cheer on each and every US foreign intervention) act as a front line for the Zionist lobby. They begin the assaults on officials, academics, and students who criticise the Israeli regime. The Murdoch media stable, which was first to attack me over various anti-war publications, over 2014-2018, more recently led the charge against fellow academic Professor Sujatha Fernandes who told her students about media bias and the fake claims of mass rape and of Israeli babies supposedly beheaded by Palestinian fighters. Her lecture materials were published in the student newspaper Honi Soit. Murdoch’s Sky News and The Australian then accused her of stirring “controversy” by speaking of such fake news. From these stories (and probably also private complaints), they seem to have triggered an “investigation” into her actions by university managers. One Left website said, accurately, that she was “under investigation for exposing Israeli lies … following demands by Zionist groups, notably the Executive Council of Australian Jewry”.

That site also noted that the rationale for an “investigation” drew on the final legal pretext used to justify my dismissal. “That is a clause in the union-management enterprise agreement at the university which restricts academic freedom to conduct displaying “the highest ethical, professional, and legal standards.” According to the Federal Court in my case, this is a standard which must be proven by the person claiming “intellectual freedom”, although there are no specific criteria. As to the publicity over “investigations” into academic actions, the pattern established in my case was that managers would announce publicly that they were “investigating” and then gag the subject of the investigation. If Professor Fernandes shuts up and follows secret orders, her position might be safe.

Students involved in mass protests against the 2023-2024 Gaza genocide have also been targeted by the lobby and by compliant university managers. Students at Melbourne University face expulsion over a building occupation; two students at USyd were suspended for “disrupting classes” with announcements about upcoming protests; and Beatrice Tucker, a student at Australia’s National University in Canberra, was expelled for stating her opinion that the Palestinian Resistance deserved “unconditional support”.

The lobby also strongly influences state media. In the case of Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf, who was sacked from state media ABC for what was said to be an “anti-Israel” report – she had shared an Instagram post on a report from Human Rights Watch which said the Israelis were using “starvation as a tool of war” in Gaza – and for some other social media posts on published news about Israeli crimes. The lobbying for her sacking came from a network called Lawyers for Israel, itself a branch of the Jewish National Fund, another of the founders of the Israeli regime. Leaked messages reveal that that group’s demand was responded to very rapidly by the ABC board. ABC staff passed a motion of no confidence in management over this sacking, to no avail. Her dismissal has certainly intimidated other ABC staff.

2. Legal charades: insubordination and intellectual freedom

The move by USyd managers to expel me from my academic position was certainly driven by the Zionist lobby, but this was not the basis for our legal challenge. My union, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), decided to defend in the Federal Court (FCA) the “intellectual freedom” provision which they had secured in successive USyd “enterprise agreements” (EAs). In court, USyd managers launched a prolonged legal attack on the right to intellectual freedom – although explicit in the EA, they claimed it was not really a right but just an “aspiration” which was subject to direction by managers; this argument won the day, in the first round.

The Murdoch media smear against me began in 2014, saying I had “stirred fresh controversy” by visiting Syria during the dirty war, about which I later wrote a book. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of this media stable has been described as “Israel’s most powerful supporter”. His media has backed every US war in the ‘Middle East’ while Murdoch himself invested in energy projects in Occupied Palestine and the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan. His ‘journalists’ attacked me for exposing the fake chemical weapons claims about Syria (independent sources show that US-backed armed groups brought nerve gas to Syria in 2013) and exposing the cover-up of Australian Air Force (RAAF) involvement in the slaughter of more than 120 Syrian Soldiers at Deir Ezzor in September 2016 (a massacre which helped ISIS terrorists take over a mountain behind Deir Ezzor airport), while pretending to “fight ISIS” in Syria and Iraq. I carried out extensive research on both incidents.

In 2017, Murdoch papers abused me in a front page smear as a “Sarin Gasbag”, for criticising the fake chemical weapons stories against the Syrian Army. Then in 2018, after a visit to North Korea, they falsely claimed I had “praised” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un; when in fact I had written nothing at all about him. I have visited many countries under attack by the big powers as part of my research work. I have indeed compared the Israeli racial massacres in Gaza with those of the Nazis, because the gravity of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people is so often understated. All this became material for colonial media abuse, mainly from the Murdoch media, whose journalists then complained to USyd managers when I exposed their lies and abuse on social media. Like the Israelis, ‘journalists’ of this abusive media group presented themselves as victims.

One graphic that I used for a teaching unit called “reading controversies” attracted attention.

It is a graphical explanation of how to read sources, in this case on the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the Israeli invasion of Gaza (Operation Protective Edge) in July 2014. At the time of preparing the first version of this graphic over a thousand had been slaughtered (the final death toll was more than 2,200), more than three quarters of them, by independent sources, were civilians. On the left side of the graphic, next to an Israeli tank, is an Israeli flag which has part of a Nazi German swastika superimposed. A repost of this graphic was linked to my 2018 research article The Future of Palestine, which makes parallels between the racial ideology and racist massacres of Nazi Germany and those of Zionist Israel.

Provost Garton made my repost of this graphic the subject of a ‘misconduct’ complaint, without once referring to the massacre or even to the existence of slaughtered Palestinian people. In this racist view of the world, the infographic was just a “swastika” graphic which offended the Israelis. The colonial media followed suit. None of them showed or explained the substance of the Gaza Graphic nor referred to my linked research article. Only the student paper Honi Soit showed and partly explained it.

After some social media statements, including arguments with tabloid journalists, USyd management moved against me, claiming I had breached the code of conduct by offending or insulting pro-war and pro-Israeli journalists in social media posts. Their implicit complaint was about insubordination – not following orders. In Provost Stephen Garton’s 26 November 2018 briefing note to the University Senate, prior to my dismissal, he stressed:

“It is clear that Dr Anderson is unwilling to accept the University’s authority and conform to the behavioural expectations and requirements for all staff … he does not accept the authority of the university or its right to determine whether his behaviour complies with his employment obligations and university policies”.

Stephen was right, I did not join the academy to follow arbitrary orders and I consistently rejected his attempts to give me directions on public comment, research, and teaching. This had never happened before in my more than 30 years working at Australian universities, including 20 years at the University of Sydney. Before the NTEU and I went to the Federal Court (FCA), there was an internal panel review, which I lost 2:1. Towards the end of that review Stephen Garton said “Well you can produce papers to say it is Apartheid Israel and I can produce just as many to say it is not.” He made it clear to me he had taken a position in defence of the Israeli regime.

Just a few weeks later in March 2019, when asked about the matter at an open meeting of staff, Vice Chancellor Michael Spence said that the dismissal action taken against me “had absolutely nothing to do with his opinions about the politics of Israel-Palestine … it had to do with … the removal of an image from teaching materials that had no pedagogical value and was inflammatory and potentially constituted an act of racial hate speech. That’s a totally different thing … absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.” Spence would have known the Zionist funders were upset; he deliberately misled staff.

My insubordination on matters of political expression, however, would irritate reactionary judges at the Federal Court of Australia (FCA). Reaction demands obedience to what they see as authority, a position that is often inherently hostile to “intellectual freedom” and academic independence. For this reason, even though five of the seven FCA judges who heard the matter decided for the NTEU and myself, the reactionary decisions of the last two meant that our case failed.

I published several articles on this case as it proceeded and will provide just an overview of the legal charades here.

2.1 First round, reaction wins

The NTEU action was lodged in the Federal Court in mid-2019, a hearing took place in October 2020 and Justice Tom Thawley gave his judgement on 26 November 2020. Soon after I wrote this article titled ‘Australia’s Federal court endorses academic cancel culture’, which summarises the case and its background and includes a copy of the judgement.

Lawyers for USyd management argued that management was entitled to give secret censorship directions to staff and there was no real independent “right” to intellectual freedom at the university. Judge Thawley agreed, basing his decision on four propositions.

First, citing the Ridd case, Thawley rejected the idea that the “intellectual freedom” clause in the Enterprise Agreement (USyd cl.315) created “an enforceable right to intellectual freedom”, which exempted it from claims of “misconduct”. Even in the case of “comments which were exercises of intellectual freedom”, the EA clauses did not “immunise” the academic from “misconduct” processes by University mangers (161, 163).

Second, he deferred to managerial prerogative, accepting the argument put by Kate Eastman, barrister for USyd, that it was not for the court to decide on matters of actual misconduct. The judge wrote, “It is unnecessary for the court to state what conclusion it would have reached … it is sufficient to note that the view taken by Professor Garton was open and that his actually being satisfied was not directly challenged or shown to be affected by some vitiating error” (227, 233).

Third, he said that the exercise of ‘intellectual freedom’ did not prevent the imposition of manager-determined sensibilities. In relation to posting my own teaching material (some of which Garton disapproved) the judge said, “Even if the posting of the infographic was a genuine exercise of intellectual freedom … it would not matter to the result … It is open to the university to invoke the [misconduct] processes … and to be satisfied that there has been “serious misconduct” where, in the context of an exercise of intellectual freedom, the standards required … have not been met” (257, 260).

Finally, the judge relegated the academic role to that of a loyal employee, bound to follow orders. “An employee’s ‘duties’ would include…the implied duty of fidelity and to obey the lawful directions of the employer…a refusal to follow lawful directions…is capable of being “serious misbehaviour” of a kind that constitutes a “serious impediment” to carrying out one’s work (265).

The Barrister for USyd managers argued for complete management veto power over the public comments of academics, and that “intellectual freedom” was just an “aspiration”, not a right; Judge Thawley agreed.

2.2 Second Round: Intellectual Freedom recognised

The NTEU challenged Thawley’s decision to a full bench of three judges (Justices Jagot and Rangiah and Chief Justice Allsop). That hearing was in mid-July 2021 and the judgement was delivered on 31 August 2021. On that same day, I published this report ‘Intellectual freedom case: Federal Court overturns ruling in NTEU & Anderson vs. University of Sydney’, which contains a copy of the judgement. The court completely overturned Thawley’s decision, its main legal findings were as follows.

The full bench of the Federal Court (Jagot, Rangiah, and Allsop) unanimously found that there was a miscarriage in the lower court. It found that the 2020 decision by Justice Thawley mistakenly ruled that (1) academics had no right to intellectual freedom, under the USyd Enterprise Agreement, and that (2) it was simply for the delegated manager to be satisfied whether or not misconduct had occurred.

The court ordered that the matter be remitted back to the same single judge (Thawley) to decide (1) whether social media posts I made in 2017 and 2018 were lawful expressions of my right to intellectual freedom (2) whether the University decided to dismiss me “in whole or part” based on my lawful expression of intellectual freedom.

The majority of this panel (Jagot and Rangiah) also recognised the substance of my ‘Gaza Graphic’, which university managers and much of the corporate media falsely depicted simply as a ‘Swastika Image’, offensive to Israelis. The judges observed (268-269) that my presentation “involves the expression of a legitimate view, open to debate, about the relative morality of the actions of Israel and Palestinian people”, criticising the characterisation of Israeli “precision attacks” on Gaza and “indiscriminate” attacks by the Palestinian resistance.

They said that my graphic, (linked to a research article) was “including Israel within a long history of colonial exploitation by one political entity over another weaker entity or people. It does not matter whether this comparison may be considered by some or many people to be offensive or wrong … offence and insensitivity cannot be relevant criteria for deciding if conduct does or does not constitute the exercise of the right of [lawful academic] intellectual freedom.”

This overturned the 2018 claim by Garton that the Gaza Graphic served “no legitimate academic or intellectual purpose”; misinformation repeated in 2019 by Vice Chancellor Spence, who told staff that the graphic “had no pedagogical value and was inflammatory”. Their sole reference point was the altered form of the Israeli flag, in the background, ignoring the Israeli killing of more than a thousand Palestinians.

This full bench did two things which showed its genuine commitment to principle. First, it gave some actual context to the Gaza Graphic; second it affirmed the right to resist improper denial of one’s right to intellectual freedom.

Jagot and Rangiyah said, “If the impugned conduct … constituted exercises of the right of intellectual freedom … then the University had no lawful right, power or authority to give warnings to or terminate Dr Anderson’s employment because of that conduct as it could not be misconduct [271] … “If Dr Anderson intended the reposting [of the Gaza Graphic as an exercise of intellectual freedom] he would have been correct and entitled to make that point to the University by the re-posting of the material [267].”

This was an important point about resistance, but one which reactionary judges do not like: if there is a basic right there must also be a right to resist denial of that right.

Ten months later in June 2022, Justice Thawley re-heard the matter and delivered his second judgement on 27 October 2022. He had been directed to address several questions, mainly about whether my public comments were linked to my intellectual work. My report on Thawley’s second judgement ‘Federal Court recognises right to intellectual freedom in NTEU and Anderson v University of Sydney’, including the full judgement, is here.

I was afraid Thawley might react badly to his first judgement being rejected so completely but, to his credit, he accepted correction calmly. He found on every count for the NTEU and myself, saying that all the key comments complained of were linked to my intellectual work and so protected under the University’s Enterprise Agreement. University managers had not proven a breach of standards in any one of them.

That included the Gaza Graphic. Adopting the reasoning of the Full Bench, Justice Thawley agreed that no part of that graphic should be taken “out of context”. It was created “for an academic purpose” and was not intended “to incite hatred of Jewish people”. University managers “did not establish any breach of standard” under university rules.

Barrister for USyd managers, Kate Eastman, who had not alleged any “harassment, vilification or intimidation” (excluded as matters of intellectual freedom by s.315) claimed there was still some breach of s.317, which additionally demanded “the highest ethical, professional and legal standards”. Thawley asked her repeatedly what were the specific breaches: “So in what way do you say Dr Anderson didn’t meet that standard, and what do you say the standard is?” Eastman had not put it in writing and could not specify anything at this hearing.

Thawley affirmed that my employment was terminated because “he exercised his right to intellectual freedom”. In doing so the University contravened its duty under cl.315 of the 2018 Enterprise Agreement and under s.50 the Fair Work Act. Provost Garton had also broken this law.

I said in my public statement that the right to intellectual freedom “should exclude abuse, hate speech, war propaganda, harassment, vilification and intimidation. But university managers have no business in trying to impose secretive political censorship, because that might offend some of their sponsors.”

Several months later Thawley ordered my reinstatement at the University, with four and a half years back pay as compensation for wrongful dismissal, but this was delayed (“stayed”) until managers ran another appeal. I said in my public statement “the Federal Court has taken its time, four years, but it finally got it mostly right. The NTEU has forced recognition of the fact that university staff have a right to intellectual freedom and, therefore, also a right to resist censorial and illegal orders by university managers.”

Yet by appealing this decision, “University of Sydney managers [were] demonstrating their ongoing inability to recognise the established rights of their staff. They claim to be “committed” to intellectual freedom but, to this day, have not accepted court rulings that there is also a ‘right’ [to intellectual freedom] which applies to all staff.”

Justice Thawley pointed out:

“The University [wrongly] argued that there was no enforceable right to intellectual freedom … that issue was resolved against the University both at trial and on appeal.”

On the Gaza Graphic, Thawley commented:

“Dr Anderson created the Gaza Graphic for an academic purpose and … the use and publication of the PowerPoint presentation … was an exercise of intellectual freedom … taking into account the context in which it was published.”

The judge found that reinstatement was the appropriate remedy. “Reinstatement is an appropriate order where employment has been terminated for a prohibited reason and there is no particular reason why such an order should not be made.” He agreed that compensation should be paid for lost earnings but not for hurt feelings or humiliation.

2.3 Final round, reaction prevails

Yet all this was overturned by two of the three judges in a second full bench appeal, made by USyd managers. Those last two judges found for the managers, maintaining the facade of a right to “intellectual freedom” but in practice destroying it with an arbitrary condition which in practice kept that “freedom” subject to management control.

Barrister for USyd managers, Justin Gleeson, ran an argument which was not put previously: that there was an onus on me to prove (per s.317) that I had acted in “the highest ethical, professional and legal standards” – not on the managers to prove that I had breached some standard – which they did not specify. The matter was heard in August 2023 and the judgement is attached to my report of 17 May 2024 ‘Federal Court trashes intellectual freedom at USyd’.

Two judges (Nye Perram and Michael Lee) found against us, accepting Gleeson’s argument, while the third (Jeffrey Kennett) found for us. Both Perram and Lee deferred to Kennett’s judgement for a detailed account of the case history; indeed he wrote 70 pages (to Perram’s 9 and Lee’s 10) suggesting to me, alongside the content, that Kennett had studied the detail of the case more carefully. All three adopted some version of the reverse onus argument (about ‘the highest ethical, professional and legal standards’) but their conclusions were very different.

Perram showed some visceral dislike for (as opposed to reasoned critique of) my Gaza Graphic (“when all is said and done, the fact is that Dr Anderson had juxtaposed a Nazi Swastika with the flag of the State of Israel … incendiary conduct”, 12, 14). He also adopted some unspecified USyd claims about “variously intemperate ad hominem attacks [i.e. criticism of journalists], not in pursuit of academic excellence and not in compliance with lawful and reasonable directions” (18). These were general assertions, none fully explained.

He feigned agnosticism over any actual breach of standards, saying that I had not proven a case the USyd managers said was up to me to prove. At the trial, even though no one had pointed it out in previous hearings, we were said to be “labouring under the misapprehension that it was the University parties (USyd managers) which bore the onus of proving Dr Anderson’s non-compliance with cl.317”. Never mind that they were the ones alleging “serious misconduct” as a basis for dismissing me.

Perram said, “I cannot be satisfied that Dr Anderson’s comments met the highest ethical, professional, and legal standards. This of course does not entail a positive finding that Dr Anderson’s comments did not meet those standards. Rather, given the paucity of evidence on this topic from at least the Union parties, I am unable to determine the issue one way or the other” (21). So much for ‘intellectual freedom’.

He was also influenced by the insubordination, not really placing it in the context of asserted intellectual freedom (as recognised by the first full bench decision) but simply referring to “repeated and deliberate defiance … of lawful and reasonable directions” (24).

Michael Lee agreed with Perram, emphasising my “refusal to comply with the directions to remove comments”, “defiance of disaffiliation directions” and remaining “defiant” over secret censorship demands on social media comments (37, 40, 42).

Observing that trial judge Thawley found that the managers “did not establish any breach of any standard which might have engaged cl.317” of the Enterprise Agreement (43, 47), Lee nevertheless reverted to the original management assertion that my Gaza graphic was “self-evidently offensive and obviously disturbing to a section of the University community”, suggesting also that the Nazi link was “peripheral” or gratuitous. He sidestepped the previous full bench decision that “offence” could not be the criterion to deny intellectual freedom, even as he noted that USyd managers did not argue that the Gaza graphic was “vilification [nor] apt to incite hatred toward, revulsion of, or serious contempt for, a group of people.”

Yet, in considering the evidentiary context, neither Lee nor any other judge made reference to my research article ‘The Future of Palestine”, linked to the re-post of the Gaza Graphic, which discussed the parallels between Nazi and Zionist racial ideology and racial massacres. Little wonder then that Lee admitted “I am unable to see how [some of Anderson’s social media comments] could be characterised as being responsible and consistent with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards.” He clearly had not read the case in much detail nor did he help articulate specific standards which were breached, resorting to the platitudes of “reasonable” and “responsible”, combined with “defiance”.

Both Perram and Lee –  in short and lazy judgements permeated with reactionary prejudice – effectively ignored the earlier full bench decision that exercise of the right to intellectual freedom implied the right to resist unlawful censorship orders and that consequent ‘offence’ was largely irrelevant.

In his longer judgement, the dissenting judge Geoffrey Kennett set out the history of the case and generally backed the reasoning of the first full court decision and the final decision of trial judge Thawley, who found that I had acted lawfully in the exercise of my intellectual freedom. While adopting some of the ‘reverse onus’ argument, Kennett rejected the Perram-Lee conclusions by contextualising the conflict. He rejected arguments that my comments were not “responsible” exercises of intellectual freedom, adding that “exercises of the [intellectual] freedom cannot form any part of the foundation for a discretionary decision to terminate employment or impose any other form of disciplinary action” (254). Because of the attempts to repress my right to intellectual freedom, he was less concerned about “disobedience” to censorial orders. He concluded that “None of the University’s grounds of appeal has been made out … I would order that the appeal be dismissed” (255).

Although Kennett was the fifth of seven FCA judges to find in our favour, the ‘final word’ views of Perram and Lee prevailed. In this way, a second full bench, by a 2 to 1 majority, effectively dismantled the right to “intellectual freedom” at the University of Sydney (USyd), negating previous rulings. This means that we ultimately failed in our case against USyd managers. After five years, the FCA had cast a muddy trail of sophistry over what intellectual freedom is and how it might be exercised and defended.

The rulings by Perram and Lee reflect classical reactionary values which try to maintain the authority of managers and diminish any practical effect of a “right to intellectual freedom” by academics subject to censorial directions. The majority decision has allowed arbitrary and political assertions about the limits of “intellectual freedom”, rendering it a meaningless slogan, imposing a ridiculous burden of defending one’s speech without specific criteria, an uphill task which would confront management and judicial prejudice. Managers could not say in which way I had not “complied with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards” but the FCA expected me to have proven that I had. When standards disappear we are subject to arbitrary dictates.

One other matter seems important. Notwithstanding the fact that judges are meant to only consider the evidence before them, it would not have escaped anyone that, in the nine long months that the second FCA full bench took to decide my matter, there was a virtually live streamed genocide occurring in Gaza, even greater than the 2014 massacre to which I referred in my Gaza Graphic.

In that time also, the Israeli regime was effectively indicted for the crime of genocide at the World Court. Millions of people, including thousands of Jewish people and leading Jewish historians like Ilan Pappe, Haim Bresheeth, Amos Goldberg and Raz Segal denounced the Israelis for acting like Nazis. In those circumstances, it is alarming to see judges expressing instinctive, poorly reasoned alarm on behalf of the baby killers, while oblivious to the murder of thousands of Palestinians.

3. Some Lessons

In the campaign to expel me from the University of Sydney the legal case was fought around the notion of a right to “intellectual freedom” but the driving force was the Zionist lobby, behind their paid agents within the USyd management, who proved themselves formal and practical enemies of “intellectual freedom”, especially as it refers to the Israel colony.

Embedded with the Zionists are the colonial media, which remains in the frontline of opposing and attacking intellectual freedom and, more broadly, freedom of speech, as regards the forever wars in the Middle East. This US centred oligarchical voice, which backs every new Washington-led war, creates the myths and carries out political assassinations on dissidents, including in academia.

For example, they give credence to the Zionist myth that there is a ‘rising tide’ of anti-Semitism from which Jewish students on campus need protection. That myth is used to cover up outrage at the live streamed genocide and pretend that, at the least, a reaction of moral equivalence is necessary, concerning this “Arab-Israeli conflict’.

In fact, the false Zionist conflation between Jewish people and “Israel” corrupts the survey data of groups such as the US based Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Every anti-“Israel” rally is classed as anti-Semitic, including rallies by Jewish activists in groups such as ‘Not in Our Name‘. In fact, mass protests against the Gaza genocide account for much of the ADL claims of “a recent rise in “anti-Semitic activity”. If people find themselves uncomfortable for their support of the genocidal regime, perhaps they should reassess their position. Their embarrassment is a salutary effect arising from justified expressions of public outrage; as is the ‘offence’ felt by supporters of the genocidal regime over parallels made between Israeli racial ideology and racial massacres and those of Nazi Germany.

Yet the ‘rising antisemitism’ myth is the basis for USyd managers making their pseudo even handed efforts to say “we do not tolerate anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim language or behaviour”. This inappropriate moral equivalence belittles the concern over actual and ongoing genocide, suggesting that young Jewish students are similarly vulnerable. Zionist lobby publications call this ‘Standing up against campus hate speech and intimidation’.

The compromised managers at USyd proved themselves key enemies of intellectual freedom, while mouthing those same words. For the first years of my court case they formally opposed the idea that such a “right” existed, saying it was just an “aspiration”, which the University supported in principle but had no weight against management directions. When the first full bench ruled that the right actually existed, USyd managers did all they could to sabotage it with a secondary argument that the person claiming intellectual freedom had to prove to some non-existent standard that he or she was acting in the “the highest ethical, professional and legal standards”.

Five years of hearings in the federal court of Australia – arguing much the same thing from different directions, with multiple delayed ‘reserved decisions’ and radical ‘flip flop’ changes in interpretation of the law – made it clear that there is no consistent law on the matter. Some judges enunciated sound principle but USyd lawyers persisted until they found reactionary judges who would hang their original argument on a different hook.

In fact the case was always political motivated, aimed at protecting the Israeli colony, a colony which six independent reports have branded an apartheid regime and therefore a crime against humanity which must be dismantled. Managers made their political motivations clear to me. Dean Jagose cited me for “misconduct” for referring to the tabloid pro-war media as the “colonial media”, Provost Stephen Garton similarly cited as “misconduct” my comment that “there is no moral equivalence between the violence of the coloniser and the colonised”. Later, Garton told me I “should have been even handed” between Palestine and “Israel”; I responded “even headed to apartheid Israel?” to which he replied “Well you can find papers to say it is apartheid Israel and I can find just as many to say it is not.” No dressed up claims about codes of conduct could hide this political reality: they tried to repress political comment which was embarrassing to their sponsors.

The ‘even handed’ notions were always fictitious, underwritten by the Anglo American law which declares every Palestinian resistance group as “terrorist”. It is notable that UNSC proscribed groups include the US proxies ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra used against Iraq, Lebanon and Syria but none of the Palestinian resistance groups. A key reason for this is the US backed armed groups were used against UN member states, while the Palestinian resistance groups had the backing of international law to engage in resistance (including armed resistance) to occupation and apartheid.

Vice Chancellor Mark Scott even resisted, to a small degree, Zionist demands to ban democratic chants such as “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” but then used ‘free speech’ slogans to deny any possibility of a boycott of Israeli institutions and drew on domestic law to ban any real discussion of justified Palestinian resistance, writing to staff and students on 26 October that USyd “will not tolerate any pro-terrorist statements or commentary, including support for Hamas’ recent terrorist attack”. He said this, as he banned a planned student seminar titled “Long Live the Intifada: defend the right to stand in solidarity with Palestine”.  Since “Hamas” has become a euphemism for any and all Palestinian armed resistance, Vice Chancellor Scott was saying that there will never be a reasonable discussion of Palestinian resistance at the University of Sydney.

The rupture I experienced with the management of USyd, and my decision to resist secret censorship orders, grew from several bases. First was the USyd collaboration in media abuse. After the Murdoch media abused my tutor in 2017, he responded with criticism of that journalist, who then complained to Dean Jagose. She issued a press release saying the tutor was being “investigated”; then wrote to him demanding he say nothing about it in public. In other words, Jagose collaborated with the gutter media to abuse a junior colleague, then used the notion of ‘confidentiality’ to hide and prevent his response and/or defence. I wrote a critical private letter to Jagose about this, saying she had breached her duty of care to a junior colleague. She, in turn, complained that my letter was ‘misconduct’. Provost Garton did much the same to me the following year. After that an NTEU Industrial Officer wrote to Garton on 24 August 2018, saying:

“The NTEU has long held the position that it is not appropriate for the university to demand staff silence when they are being investigated … Not withstanding our position … the NTEU has generally advised our members to respect these requests as we understood they came with mutual obligations on the university [i.e. on managers] .. It seems from your email that either you do not understand the requirement or have chosen to ignore it”.

Second, I had learned that, for a professional to comply with secret improper directions means that he or she assumes responsibility for that impropriety. We cannot blame anyone else if we do something wrong, under secret directions. It becomes our responsibility. Third, I was well aware by 2017-2018 that USyd managers were ‘under the thumb’ of their private funders; I found that they even get personal bonuses for keeping these funders happy. In these circumstances it was anathema to me to take pseudo ‘ethical’ lessons from corrupt managers, acting in service of the Zionist lobby. For these reasons I resisted every secret censorial demand.

Even in the rarified Australian political environment, it should be clear that the University of Sydney will be one the last places to expect any sensible academic discussion or debate on the Middle East wars, all of which have Palestine and the Israelis at their centre. As my legal case showed, there seems to be an endless supply of officials and journalists who will rise to defend the hurt feelings of genocidal baby killers. Harsh criticism of the Israeli regime is banned, and even more so any favourable recognition of the Palestinian and regional resistance.

Academics who seriously question the New Middle East wars or expose Israeli myths will be attacked by the colonial media in coordination with a corrupted university management. All this amounts to a deep racism against Palestinian people, Arabs and Muslims, a racism sponsored by the Zionist lobby. The depth of Zionist lobby investment at the University of Sydney enforces this intellectual desert. Fortunately there are many other places for genuine discussion.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/gaza–the-zionist-lobby-and-the-university-of-sydney