Sydney Uni Pro-Palestinian Deportation Scare Foreshadows Potential Debilitating Law Reform

The Sydney University Office of the Academic Registrar wrote to Luna, an international student from Malaysia, on 3 February 2025, to inform her that she’s the subject of an internal investigation over a potentially antisemitic incident, and as the notice threatened potential suspension, the asylum-seeking student realised that this could further lead to deportation back to serious persecution.

Luna, a transgender student, is applying for asylum whilst in this country on a student visa. In response to the registrar, she wrote that she is seeking asylum “due to immense violence and persecution” in her home country and as a trans woman, she’s been “denied access to gender-affirming care, including hormone replacement therapy” and suspension would mean refoulement.

The issue that brought Luna to the scrutiny of the tertiary education institution is that she entered a number of tutorial rooms and wrote statements upon whiteboards in green marker, which claimed the university was complicit in the genocide Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinians of Gaza, along with statements regarding weapons investments and the mention of the official Gaza death toll.

Universities are supposed to be bastions of free thought, where societal norms can be challenged to progress better outcomes, yet since students took a stand against the Gaza genocide in the form of a protest camp 11 months ago, the calling out of Israel’s genocidal actions has been suppressed via the conflation of criticism of Israel as being a form of antisemitism or prejudice towards Jewish people.

The peculiar aspect to this threat of suspension and deportation due to antisemitic conduct, which the university has since revoked, is that it mirrors a policy the Coalition is seeking to enact into law, and it also reflects the recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism by USYD, which considers criticism of Israel an expression of Jewish hate, and the fear is this could become federal law.

Against the spirit of higher learning

“We are absolutely appalled at the threatened deportation of a fellow student for Palestine solidarity,” said Wendy Thompson, USYD Student Representative Council queer officer. “The policies wielded at the student are overly punitive and discriminatory. They make campus unsafe for any student who needs to speak out about their rights.”

“These policies, including the Campus Access Policy, put international students at risk of deportation. They put transgender students at risk of forced detransition,” they continued. “They put student’s reliant on enrolment for Centrelink financial support at risk of homelessness.”

According to the SRC queer officer, the university’s “pathetic” 5 March crisis management statement following the initial public backlash over the threat to suspend and deport Luna, “reveals their true colours after they knowingly refused her request for support as an asylum seeker”.

In its statement, USYD put the threat of suspension, which would ultimately lead to automatic deportation, down to an “administrative error”, however this was only issued after public outcry, as the initial notification required Luna to keep the misconduct notification confidential or she would face disciplinary action.

The university has now allowed Luna’s request for an extension of time to respond to the charge of misconduct, which will permit her to secure a bridging visa prior to taking it on. Although the misconduct investigation is set to go forward, regardless of the deportation scare.

In response to claims of antisemitic conduct in respect of the USYD Gaza solidarity encampment, university management produced an updated Campus Access Policy last July, along with a reimagined Promotional and Display Materials Policy in January, that have both led to a crackdown upon student protests and displays of signage on campus, in order to curb pro-Palestinian actions.

“The University of Sydney, and indeed, all of our public education institutions, should be about supporting students, supporting academics, supporting an environment of education and learning and debate and free speech, active community life and shaping the next generation of community leaders,” said NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong.

“Instead, what we have seems to be a university leadership… that is more interested in the idea of playing the role of the NSW police and cracking down on staff and students on campus, than they are about delivering on their fundamental public role, which is to deliver support to students while they are provided with a healthy and free public education.”

A dangerous conflation

Universities Australia last week announced that all 39 Australian universities are adopting a new definition of antisemitism, which follows the definition of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism when calling for the state’s dissolution or when it’s assumed that Jewish people are responsible for Israel’s actions.

Over the course of the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, however, mere political criticism of the Israeli state has at times been labelled as antisemitic in the public sphere by the authorities.

Indeed, as US academic Judith Butler pointed out during a forum in Paris last year, the Israeli state and some of its people have been propagating the conflation of political criticism of Israel with antisemitism since the 1970s, in order to block criticism of its apartheid policies.

And in turn, the focus on antisemitism both at our nation’s centres of tertiary learning, which led to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities, and in the public sphere by major party politicians and the media has served to shield criticism of Israel’s commission of genocide under the guise of a nation merely defending itself.

Somewhat akin to the Sydney University deportation scare, Liberal leader Peter Dutton told those gathered at the Sky News Antisemitism Summit a fortnight ago that he’d insert antisemitism into the character test contained in section 501 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), if elected as PM, which would permit visa cancellation or denial over antisemitic conduct retrospectively to October 2023.

Members of the local Israel Lobby produced an action plan at the summit, calling on our nation to proclaim a national emergency in regard to antisemitism, along with the passing of uniform national antisemitism policing laws, an advertising campaign should be run in order to train the community in how to identify antisemitism and a ban on university protest camps should be progressed.

The lower house of US congress passed a motion in late 2023, while the Gaza genocide had not been long underway, which recognised anti-Zionism and harsh political criticism of Israel as antisemitic behaviour.

Zionism is a 19th century European doctrine that seeks the establishment of a Jewish state in historic Palestine, which is a settler colonial policy that advocates for the dispossession of Palestinians from their homelands and in practice, it’s genocidal.

And although the Antisemitism Summit did not call for such a definition to be enshrined in federal law, the fear is the lobby is pushing for such law reform, and the obvious political tutelage that would progress such a change would be a Dutton government.

A brave new repression

“The idea that we have a student being issued with a disciplinary notice that is enforced upon them to keep that confidential, to put them through that trauma, and then to flip it around and say it was an administrative error is an absolute disgrace,” said Leong on Gadigal land in Camperdown’s Victoria Park on Thursday.

“The level of privilege of those who are running this university to not realise the real and ongoing trauma that the so-called administrative error will have on that student… is just the complete opposite of what a public education should be doing,” the Greens MP added.

Leong called upon Sydney University and NSW minister for skills, TAFE and tertiary education Steve Whan to ensure the new Campus Access Policy is repealed and that any misconduct notifications that have been distributed to other students be dropped.

USYD SRC vice president Shovan Bhattarai pointed out that Luna’s “alleged crime” was writing a message, stating “the truthful fact that there is a genocide in Gaza and the death toll of that”. And she also pointed to the persecution of Luna as having played out against other students under different circumstances at Sydney University and other tertiary centres right across the continent.

“The university only released its damage control statement and provided the essential extension after community outrage,” said Damien Nguyen, Pride in Protest member of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras board.

“Contrary to the damage control statement made by the university yesterday, the punitive and abusive nature is by design, it is not an administrative error.”

“We demand that the University of Sydney drop all allegations of misconduct against Luna,” Nguyen made certain. “Furthermore, we demand that the University of Sydney immediately drop all allegations of misconduct in relation to the Campus Access Policy, for that is a racist and Zionist policy.”