Published: 28 November 2024
Last updated: 2 December 2024
The University of Sydney has accepted a series of recommendations to limit protest activity on campus, after an external review commissioned in response to the pro-Palestine encampment earlier this year.
The new policies are drawn from the Hodgkinson External Review Report, which was commissioned after the University faced charges of antisemitism at the encampment, and complaints that the University bowed to protesters' demands and failed to provide a safe environment for Jewish staff and students.
The new protest policies include:
- No encampments
- No protests inside buildings on campus
- No student addresses before lectures on any subject
- No banners attached to footbridges
- New complaints and dispute resolutions procedures, including protocols for police on campus
- A “New Civility Rule” which requires “each person utilising a word or phrase is responsible at the time the word or phrase is used to identify to the audience the context in which it is used”.
The New Civility Rule is the most controversial move and has been criticised by David Brophy, a senior history lecturer at the University of Sydney, as “utterly bizarre and unworkable”.
“Are academics really expected to explain the context of every word and phrase they use?” he said. “A vague rule like this will most likely be wielded selectively against those who speak up for Palestine,” he told The Guardian.
The rule was proposed by the review to deal with grey areas such as the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which pro-Palestine protesters describe as a generic protest call but which supporters of Israel’s right to exist describe as genocidal and antisemitic, because a Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would require the complete destruction of Israel and the decimation of 40% of the world’s Jews.
The Hodgkinson Review said the rule will “make the speaker responsible for ensuring that the meaning of the words and phrases used by them was clear to the audience being addressed”.
Comments1
philip mendes28 November at 06:47 am
It doesn’t surprise me that the supporters of Palestinian ultra-nationalist agendas resent any suggestion that they should be ‘civil’ to those with whom they disagree. But this just reveals how extreme their views are, and equally the uncritical ‘group think’ bubbles that they reside in. The pro-Palestinian advocates that I dialogued with in the late 80s and 90s were very aware of the major political differences within Palestinian society, and indeed the specific political meaning of particular terms and language. They would never have doubted that terms such as ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘From the river to the sea’ reflected a hardline view that excluded any recognition of Israel or peaceful negotiations with Israel. The BDS movement today has become a cult, and those within it have no capacity to reflect on the wide range of opinions outside their camp.