Universities not doing enough to deal with protests and ‘highly personal’ attacks, antisemitism royal commission hears

Prof Steven Prawer tells commission University of Melbourne needs to show it tolerates dissent, but not misbehaviour

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A Jewish professor has told the royal commission into antisemitism the University of Melbourne needs to show it doesn’t “tolerate misbehaviour” after the expulsion of two pro-Palestine student activists who occupied his office was overturned.

Steven Prawer, a professor of physics, said on Tuesday that he had not known at the time whether it was a “terrorist attack”.

On 9 October 2024, 20 pro-Palestine students covered in keffiyehs, hoods and masks occupied Prawer’s office for about 90 minutes, protesting the university’s partnerships with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prawer, a self-described Zionist who wears a kippah, is the academic lead for the universities’ joint PhD program. Two protesters were recommended for expulsion and two for suspension after the incident.

“This was only one year after the atrocities in Israel and so I was very perturbed,” Prawer said. “I had no idea at that stage if it was a protest, if it was a terrorist attack.”

Prawer described the protesters’ allegations that the university was complicit in genocide due to its partnerships with Israel as “ridiculous” and said the protest was a “highly personal attack”.

“When there are 50 students on the lawn protesting and surrounded by security staff, they don’t pose an imminent threat to an individual,” he said. “When there are 20 students in an office with an individual, the equation is completely different.”

Then vice-chancellor Prof Duncan Maskell issued a statement to the university community saying he was “shocked and appalled”. After the students were disciplined in June, about 150 university employees and affiliates signed a petition maintaining sit-ins were a legitimate form of protest. The decision was overturned by the academic board after an appeal.

Prawer said he still didn’t know the identity of the protesters, despite hiring a private investigator as he feared “Hamas connections”.

“I think for my protection … I should know who these people are,” he said. “The community needs to hear loudly and clearly that the university tolerates dissent but it doesn’t tolerate misbehaviour … Where’s the deterrence?”

After a university sit-in and the occupation of Prawer’s office, indoor protests at the University of Melbourne have been banned .

The fourth block of royal commission hearings, taking place in Melbourne this week, is examining the lived experiences of Jewish students and academics, including the response of universities to combat hate.

A University of Melbourne spokesperson described Prawer’s testimony as “powerful” and acknowledged the “significant impact” the incident had had on himself and his family.

“The university is providing ongoing support to Professor Prawer and we uphold his right to pursue his academic endeavours and research partnerships without being harassed or intimidated,” they said.

The interim vice-chancellor, Prof Glyn Davis, will appear before the commission on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s witnesses also spoke of Jewish students fearing to attend university campuses in the aftermath of the 7 October Hamas terror attack.

A former Monash university student, Paris Enten, spoke of her mental health “deteriorating rapidly” and becoming “clinically traumatised” towards the end of her degree. The self-identified Zionist said a trigger point was a Holocaust study tour in Europe where some of her classmates claimed Jews weren’t its “main victims” and filmed “TikTok dances in the carparks of Auschwitz”.

The president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Jeremy Suss, told the commissioner he was often “trying to console” undergraduates who had arrived on campuses with a “strong sense of apprehension” because of antisemitic incidents reported in the media and via word of mouth.

Suss attends Monash University and said he had a “productive relationship” with the chancellery but wasn’t immune to hostility on campus. He pointed to a Jewish event for the Sukkot holiday on the anniversary of 7 October.

Afterwards, he said, four individuals approached him and began “quite aggressively” interrogating him, including talking about “killing or exiling all of Israel’s population” and saying “we see all of you at your lunches every week”.

“I found it incredibly confronting … I ensured members at our AUJS events were no longer packing up on their own,” he said.

“It is a new constant task to be walking students through the difficult processes of following up from their awful experiences on campus.

“Universities have not dealt with incidents in a productive or meaningful way. We have many students that have waited months to hear back [about] incidents. Sometimes they are outwardly dismissed … Sometimes they never hear back.”

Author, activist and academic Prof Dennis Altman criticised universities for what he described as moving to “shut down discussion” on Israel-Palestine, adding the best path forward was to build bridges between Jewish and Palestinian communities.

He told the commissioner he was more afraid of “neo-Nazis” than pro-Palestine protesters. He said the biggest problem universities had was “they have actually not found ways of encouraging … respectful debate”.

“The tendency has been the opposite. It’s been to shut down discussion. And that I think in turn promotes all sorts of conspiratorial stories,” he said.

“What we most need in this country at the moment on this issue is a mutual recognition that people are hurting. Social cohesion demands that all groups come out of their narrow focus and reach across.”