The People’s Inquiry into Free Speech on Palestine: Interview with National Union of Student’s James McVicar

Australian Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi announced on 7 March 2025, that she’ll be joining with Students for Palestine, as well as members of APAN (the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network), the Jewish Council of Australia and the National Union of Students in holding the People’s Inquiry into Free Speech on Palestine.

The forum is being held in response to university students having been charged as engaging in antisemitism, over the staging of protest encampments on campuses in opposition to Israel’s wholesale massacre and starvation campaign against the occupied Palestinians of Gaza, which not only comprised an attack on the camps but further an assault upon the edifice of rationality itself.

As National Union of Students education officer James McVicar puts it, the twisting of calls for Israel to halt its mass killing of fellow human beings, so that the camps could be reported to the public as hotbeds of Jewish hatred, is really stepping into the realm of the absurd, with these ‘bastions of rationality’ now a fair way down the path to becoming institutions grounded in nonsense.

The insistence that a sizable portion of our society buy the lie that political criticism of Israel is akin to hatred of Jewish people, coupled with the last month announcement by Universities Australia that tertiary institutions are adopting a new definition of antisemitism that incorporates certain criticisms of Israel with prejudice toward Jews, is set to have an ongoing corrosive effect if not put to an end.

A forum for truth in a post-truth world

As McVicar further explained, the People’s Inquiry into Free Speech on Palestine has been modelled upon the 1960s War Crimes Tribunals held by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, along with a number of other leading intellectuals of the time, which served to evaluate US foreign policy and that nation’s operations in Vietnam.

This new inquiry has been launched to establish “whether the human rights of students and staff supporters of Palestine have been violated by governments and university administrations and whether Australian universities are upholding their obligations to staff and students regarding freedom of speech and expression, and therefore, academic freedom as it relates to Palestine”.

The inquiry is currently accepting submissions until 31 March 2025, ahead of the staging of the forum, which will consider infringements upon rights, the targeting of staff and students, adequacy of university disciplinary policies, whether universities have eroded the right to free speech and activism on campuses, as well as the nature of the type of antisemitism definition the universities are to adopt.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to National Union of Students education officer James McVicar about what’s been going on at tertiary campuses over the last 12 months, the irrational nature of the charges of antisemitism that are being propagated and how the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel really works to block legitimate political criticism of a genocidal apartheid nation.

The People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine is about to be held. This forum is in response to the backlash against the staging of Gaza solidarity encampments at Australian universities beginning in April last year, which framed these antigenocide demonstrations as hotbeds of antisemitism.

Despite these encampments eventually disbanding, certain figures are continuing to assert that antisemitism is rampant on Australian university campuses.

So, James, how would you describe what’s been going on at Australian universities over the last 12 months?

Over the last 12 months, universities have been hotbeds of repression, more than anything. They have obviously been a really important site for pro-Palestine activism with the encampments.

Following the encampments on a lot of campuses, there were student general meetings held across the country on university campuses that overwhelmingly voted in solidarity with Palestine and to oppose university ties to the military industry.

But in response to all of that, we have seen university campuses across the country try and limit political speech and political activism on campuses.

At my campus, RMIT, the university posted a new campus access policy proposal to its website that included things like the banning of camping on campus, as well as banning the setting up structures and engaging in commerce on campus, which was all pretty squarely targeted at political activism.

We have seen students getting disciplined for participating in activism and protests, and staff have been disciplined for political speech.

There has been a general atmosphere of backlash against political activism, particularly in response to pro-Palestine actions and speech among staff and students.

This backlash against the antigenocide activism at universities last year, led to the holding of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities, as well as the rollout of the Campus Access Policy at Sydney University while Macquarie University has established a safe room for Jewish students.

What’s the general reaction from students and staff to these developments?

The implementation of campus access policies and things like that have definitely not been in response to general student sentiment, as student sentiment has been on the side of freedom of speech and freedom of political activism.

This is really being driven from the top: the politicians, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, and university management, who’ve become hostile to activism on campus, especially that which has called into question their own complicity in war, along with activism that has tried to raise broader political questions, especially in relation to Palestine.

There has been positive sentiment in general amongst students and staff for freedom of speech, academic freedom and freedom of protest on campus, as it is central to campus life, and it’s one of the things that universities like to boast about – their history of radical protest on campus – in their prospectuses and advertising campaigns but at the same time they are trying to stop it all.

How would you say students in general are taking the imposition of all these new inquiries and policies regarding antisemitism on campus?

Most students can see that what is really happening is pro-Palestine actions are being falsely construed and slandered as antisemitic in an attempt to discredit the demands and the politics behind these protests.

These are encampments, general meetings and protests that are calling for an end to war, peace in the Middle East and that people don’t have to starve and die.

So, people can see through the slander and the idea that it is antisemitic to protest against a genocide and to stand for peace. Most people can see this is absurd.

A lot of people are cognisant to the fact that on many campuses, not just in Australia but around the world, it has been Jewish students and staff who have been leading the way for protest on Palestine, so many people aren’t falling for the idea that these demonstrations are antisemitic while they are protesting for human rights and standing against war.

Universities Australia last month announced that all Australian universities are adopting a new broader definition of antisemitism that incorporates certain criticisms of Israel. This is based upon the definition of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which serves to block certain criticisms of the Israeli state.

So, how are students and staff considering the imposition of this new definition?

This is still coming through on campuses. I don’t know of any universities that have officially adopted or endorsed this definition yet.

It has been recognised by Universities Australia, but from what I understand, it is still to be ratified by university councils, so I still think there is time to push back against this.

Again, this initiative on the part of Universities Australia hasn’t come from students and staff, this is an initiative that has been driven from the top, by the parliamentary inquiry, university managements and by politicians, who are keen to see campus activism come to a halt.

In terms of what the student response has been to this definition and other measures, there is no general support for this, but we are still yet to see the impact of any of it.

What I can say is the National Tertiary Education Union, the NTEU, officially opposes the Universities Australia definition, for the reasons that we have been discussing, including the impact on freedom of speech and the right to protest.

The Nation Union of Students is preparing a statement to put out on the Universities Australia definition. So, the impact of this remains to be seen.

But if it is adopted at universities, it will undoubtably be used to stifle political speech, to crackdown on pro-Palestine activists, and to create a more general atmosphere of repression.

Universities will not be a place where protesters can engage in political activity freely. Students and staff will have to worry about repression.

In response to all this, the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine was announced a fortnight ago. The inquiry is currently accepting submissions from the public until 31 March 2025.

What is this inquiry all about?

The People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine was launched by several groups: Students for Palestine, the Greens, APAN and the Jewish Council of Australia.

It is a people’s inquiry. The idea is that it is a grassroots inquiry, looking into whether free speech rights and the right to protest on university campuses have been infringed upon over the last 12 months or so.

The idea behind it is to try and generate some attention to the fact that because the universities have been sites of pro-Palestine solidarity action, it has also meant they have been sites of serious repression.

But this is getting very little coverage in the media. It is generating very little outrage around students and staff being disciplined and reprimanded for their political opinions.

This is McCarthyism.

The idea of the people’s inquiry was to set up a forum where this can be discussed, publicised and attention can be drawn to it, with the idea behind that being the Russell Tribunal, which was another grassroots inquiry that was investigating war crimes committed in Vietnam. That was the inspiration for the idea.

So, that’s the 1960s tribunal held by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre? 

Yes. That’s the one.

We want to shine a light on the situation for university students and staff engaging in pro-Palestine speech and activism on campus today.

Lastly, James, the crackdown on campuses hasn’t come to an end. Much of what happened in Australia mirrored events in the US, the Trump administration is launching a further crackdown on US universities and just a fortnight ago, there was a deportation scare involving an international student at Sydney University.

So, what sorts of outcomes are the organisers of the inquiry hoping to achieve? What sort of impact would you like to see this forum have upon the situation at Australian universities?

We want to generate some publicity, and we want to draw public attention to what is really going on at university campuses.

If you just read the mainstream press about what is going on at university campuses, you’d have a very distorted idea about what is going on.

We want the inquiry to be an opportunity to shine a light on the repression that’s taking place on campuses, which include serious infringements upon freedom of speech and existential infringements on academic freedom, which in theory is supposed to be the bedrock of universities.

All of these hard-won rights and important freedoms are just being done away with and seriously trampled upon on many campuses.

So, the idea of the inquiry is that we want to shine a light on that. We want to generate publicity. We want this in the media. We want people to know about this and be outraged about it.

Universities are susceptible to public opinion. Universities are sensitive to public opinion, and they know that public opinion, in the main, supports freedoms, freedom of speech and freedom of activism.

We also know that universities are sensitive to the opinions of their staff and students, and we want the people’s inquiry to be a platform for those staff and students, who’ve been targeted by the university for their political beliefs.

We also want to inform the broader public, about what is going on at university campuses and the levels of repression and undemocratic antiprotest rules that are being introduced across the country on university campuses.

Main photo: RMIT Gaza Solidarity Encampment