Tertiary Educators Nationwide Demand Universities Boycott Israel

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for Palestine, the National Union of Students (NUS) and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) held a National Day of Action on Wednesday, in support of implementing an Institutional Academic Boycott of Israel, of which the NTEU National Council voted to progress at a 5 October meeting held in Naarm-Melbourne.

The overwhelming majority of more than 100 NTEU delegates voted in favour of the resolution that demands cooperation with Israeli academic institutions ends, that Australian universities advocate for a global boycott of Israeli tertiary learning, that condemnation of and divestment from Israeli institutions takes place, and that Palestinian tertiary institutions and students are supported.

“NTEU for Palestine has been building support for an academic policy for an institutional boycott of Israel throughout the year, and on October 5, at our National Council of the National Tertiary Education Union, we passed and endorsed the institutional boycott of Israel,” Dr Markela Panegyres told a group of NTEU members and uni students gathered in support of the boycott on Wednesday.

Around one hundred staff and students turned out in front of the institution’s Great Hall on 23 October, at the site of the USYD Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which commenced on 23 April and sparked a nationwide movement as it continued on for two months.

And those gathered spoke of 12 months of Israeli perpetrated atrocities and their resolve to maintain the campaign until ties with Israel are officially cut, prior to then marching up the main thoroughfare of Broadway to join others protesting the same cause at the University of Technology.

In a time of genocide

“The resolution not only demanded an academic boycott, but it also demanded an end to research partnerships with companies currently supporting the genocide of Palestinians and currently supplying weapons to Israel,” Panegyres, a USYD academic told rallygoers. “We are also demanding that universities cut ties with weapons manufacturers and with militaries.”

“NTEU for Palestine has been building support for an academic policy for and an institutional boycott of Israel throughout the year,” she continued, adding that earlier this month the motion successfully passed.

The Institutional Academic Boycott of Israel that tertiary staff countrywide now have in their sights also calls upon academic institutions to carry out audits to assess all ties with the Israeli military and weapons manufacturers. And the motion further encourages the establishment of scholarships for Palestinians and commitment to reestablishing higher education in Gaza.

Panegyres told Sydney Criminal Lawyers that the university has agreed to make disclosures, however it has fallen short of any commitment to divesting.

USYD is known to have relationships with weapon manufactures Thales, Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, and Safran. And NTEU for Palestine also wants to see an academic ban on institutions, like the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Technion.

“The university should replace the funding of all staff whose positions depend on arms companies, to enable them to undertake research for the public good,” the academic added.

A feeble compromise

After weeks of the USYD Gaza Solidarity Encampment, University of Sydney management agreed to make some disclosures around links to weapons companies that comprises of publishing the details of its defence and security-related research and investments from July onwards. And these reforms were actioned in order to see the camp brought to an end.

The university also made a commitment to “fostering greater understanding of racism”, and this was made with a particular view to antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Unlike other tertiary institutions, Sydney University didn’t overtly attempt to shut down the solidarity encampment over concerns it was antisemitic, but staff and students do consider the institution did bow to the pressure of Zionists.

And vice chancellor Mark Scott was later made to publicly apologise for allowing the encampment to proceed in the way that it did, as it was suggested it had made Jewish students feel unsafe.

“Student activists at the encampment had put up a strong fight for 55 days, despite management’s repression and intimidation,” Panegyres explained. “This was along with the fearmongering and Islamophobia from the establishment media.”

The university also told students at the encampment that management had reviewed its investment policies, and the institution had banned all financial ties with the tobacco industry and cluster munitions. However, these are not the relationships that staff and students are calling for divestment from.

Liberation awaits

“Years and years ago, when Sydney Staff for BDS first started out, when we were having initial conversations with the union about the academic boycott of Israel, we faced a massive campaign from the management from our union to try to silence us,” Palestinian academic Fahad Ali recalled.

“Look where we are now. It has been a long time. It has gone from me being an undergraduate at this campus to me now working here, and we now have, at the highest levels of our union, a commitment to the academic boycott of Israel,” said the member of NTEU.

Ali then made certain that just as the national union has now adopted the stance it once rejected, so too will tertiary institutions one day advance the boycott on Israel.

Students Against War member Angus Dermody told those gathered that “after a year of genocide and a year of protest on campus”, the university continues to refuse “to take any action to cut a single tie to Israel’s apartheid and genocide”.

The Sydney University student, who was recently suspended for his on campus activism over the past year, revealed that the university is continuing its exchange programs with universities, like Tel Aviv and Technion, which are institutions built upon stolen Palestinian land.

“After the Gaza Solidarity Encampment that lasted two months, the only response from the university was to bring in a new policy, the Campus Access Policy, which aims to stop us from protesting on campus, from postering, from leafleting, from using megaphones,” said Dermody.

“After they brought that in, members of Students Against War were leafleting and security came and took our leaflets from us and called us “terrorists”, the antiwar campaigner continued. “They tried to ban our snap protest for Lebanon, while Israel was bombing civilians in their thousands because our poster had Arabic text on it.”

“And just yesterday they used their Campus Access Policy to shut down a bake sale raising funds for a family in Gaza,” he added.