Hundreds of Academics Sign Open Letter Opposing Envoy’s Anti-Semitism Proposal

More than 380 academics have signed an open letter urging the federal government to reject Anti-Semitism Envoy Jillian Segal’s report, calling it an “unprecedented attack on academic freedom and the autonomy of universities.”

The signatories include over 100 professors and associate professors and around 200 doctoral degree holders.

“These proposed measures have nothing to do with combating anti-Semitism, and everything to do with limiting and censoring criticism of Israel and stifling freedom of speech on Palestine,” the statement says.

“The measures called for in this report are an extraordinary attempt to place higher education under the control of a political lobby.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already signalled that universities that ignore anti-Semitism could lose federal funding. But the academics say this is an “overreach of the envoy’s terms of reference.”

The group notes that, in one of her first speeches after assuming the role, Segal gave examples of what she considers to be systemic forms of anti-Semitism, including “posters, graffiti, [and] boycott Israel stickers,” as well as “teaching Israel/Palestine using frameworks of apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide, and wearing a keffiyeh.”

“Universities are spaces in which criticism of powerful institutions such as state actors needs to be carried out for a robust and democratic society to flourish,” the open letter says.

“Segal’s recommendations are a threat to the principle of academic freedom, just like the suggestion that she should be permitted to ‘monitor media’ poses an unacceptable threat to the freedom of the press.”

Part of Segal’s proposals also involve adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. But the signatories point out that Kenneth Stern, the drafter of the IHRA definition and director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, has stated it would be a “disaster” if Australia adopts Segal’s recommendations and that it would reinforce trends of “McCarthyism.”

“He warned that adoption of the IHRA ‘not only [harms] democracy, it blinds us to how anti-Semitism actually works,'” they said.

They also referenced Amnesty International Australia, which cautioned that Segal’s report “undermines fundamental civil and political rights, stifles protest, and risks deepening community divisions.”

“This is so even as a Federal Court of Australia decision has drawn a strong distinction between critique of Israel and Zionism on the one hand, and antisemitism on the other,” the letter reads.

Anti-Semitism should not be treated any differently from any other form of racism, the academics say.

“The envoy’s report … treats anti-Semitism as if it occurs in isolation from other forms of racism and disconnects the struggle against antisemitism from the struggle against other forms of racism,” they said.

“Universities have a duty to ensure all students are protected from racism and that academic freedom is maintained for everyone. Treating antisemitism as an exceptional form of racism undermines these core universal principles.”

Aside from individual universities’ policies against racism and discrimination, Australia has numerous legal and other safeguards including the Racial Discrimination Act and the Equal Opportunity Act which exist in most states and territories.

They urge the government to reject the Special Envoy’s report and to “take real steps to combat all racism equally and ensure that universities are protected from political interference.”