The University of Melbourne has always been a frontier of racial-colonial and imperial violence. First founded in 1853 on Country stolen from Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples, the University of Melbourne was historically recognised as a global intellectual centre for eugenics, and held the largest collection of stolen Aboriginal Ancestral remains. To date, many of these Ancestral remains are yet to be repatriated to their communities. In recent years the University of Melbourne has committed to “confront[ing] its role, past and present, in the settler-colonial project” through the adoption of two key policies: the Murmuk Djerring Indigenous Strategy 2023-2027, and most recently, the Anti-Racism Action Plan 2024-2027. 

Yet the University’s racial-colonial violence continues in new forms today. At this moment, there is an intensifying climate of political repression on campus, operating in the name of ‘antiracism’. In the past months, the University of Melbourne has evidenced its foundational and ongoing investment in settler colonialism and imperialism by repressing criticism of Israel—a position that is increasingly non-controversial for its alignment with normative global standards of international humanitarian law. This comes after the new Vice Chancellor imposed restrictions on indoor protests or protests that ‘disrupt’ University operations, and facilitated additional digital surveillance of staff and students. This in turn is layered upon the University’s unexpected 2023 adoption of the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism and support for the recent Universities Australia definition—both of which have been widely criticised for conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. There is direct and punitive policing of Palestinian solidarity on campus, driven by Murdoch media hit pieces, alongside the apparent protection of senior professors and leaders within the University’s ranks. It is Palestinian, Muslim, Indigenous, insecure and international workers and students facing disciplinary action and being cast as disruptive, unprofessional and threatening. Last month, in the midst of this, the University published its first annual report on racism; it does not mention Palestinian students and staff or Gaza.

At surface level the recent actions and inactions of the University of Melbourne appear to stand in contradiction to the University’s proclaimed commitment to antiracism. In actuality, they reveal how antiracism discourses are increasingly strategically mobilised by universities to sustain their function as apparatuses of settler colonial and imperial power. 

This growing discursive infrastructure of repression is now being directly felt on campus. The University has recently recommended two students for expulsion and two for suspension for their involvement in the pro-Palestine encampment that was initiated by students on the Parkville campus last year, and for protesting University partnerships with weapons manufacturers and Israeli institutions. The encampments were a part of one of the largest ever global student-led anti-war movements that called on universities around the world to end their research roles in weapons proliferation. Amnesty International condemned the disciplinary action taken against the students, with Australia’s Occupied Palestinian Territory Spokesperson Mohamed Duar, stating that “the right to protest is a fundamental human right that must be protected and upheld, and universities bear an enormous responsibility in safeguarding these rights”.

While statements like these can be usefully mobilised within institutions to alleviate the immediate repressive violence faced by individuals, Duar’s comments are an important reminder of the types of discourses that organisers should simultaneously resist internalising. As the Community Justice Network reminds us, when responding to political repression it is critical to divert discourses away from positioning universities, the legal system or institutional procedures as fair or capable of reform. This includes representations of the problem that suggest that political repression is a result of poor individual choices or failures of institutional procedure. This does not mean abandoning making demands of institutions or critiquing their procedures, but rather, creative attentiveness to the discourses that we mobilise whilst making our demands and critiques. In this sense, we can demand the University of Melbourne reverses the disciplinary action taken against students, whilst simultaneously spotlighting how these instances of political repression are not exceptional, but rather indicative of the University’s vested interests. 

The University’s apparent complicity in the recent doxxing of sessional tutor Fatih Oguzhan by the Murdoch-controlled newspaper underscores its systematic investment in suppressing dissenting voices. Last month, The Australian published an online article that included the name and photograph of Oguzhan, a Turkish Muslim educator who received the SSPS Award for Teaching Excellence in Tutoring in Semester Two of 2023. A long-standing tutor in the Faculty of Arts, Oguzhan exercised his academic freedom in the classroom by critiquing Israel’s military operations. A student in one of Oguzhan’s tutorials made a number of allegations to the Australian newspaper, which were then published within two days of the tutorial. These allegations included that Oguzhan had “crossed a line” by “pushing his opinions on Israel and the IDF”. While Provost Nicola Phillips did not directly name Oguzhan, she confirmed with the newspaper that the University had received a report from an unidentified source pertaining to a number of allegations made by unnamed students. The Provost’s cooperation with The Australian in exposing Oguzhan’s identity demonstrates how the upper echelons of the University operate within greyzones that bypass the University’s own formal complaint mechanisms and privacy protections. The Australian insulated itself against potential defamation action by stating that it was “not suggesting any of the allegations are true, only that they have been reported to the University and are currently being looked into.” 

A day after The Australian article was published, a rushed and opaque investigation process commenced (facilitated by the fact that Oguzhan was a casual employee and therefore the University was not bound by EBA commitments on misconduct processes). Recently, Oguzhan was sent a termination letter he has since shared, accusing him of poor judgement, a lack of contrition, and failing to create a ‘safe’ learning environment for students on campus. Emphasising his politically alienating and vulgar language, in this letter Oguzhan was informed that he would not be considered for future employment at or “association with” the University of Melbourne. The entire process was completed within seven weeks of The Australian article. 

The news of Oguzhan’s termination comes just days after a twenty month old email authored by a Senior Professor in the Melbourne Law School (MLS), Professor Eric Descheemaeker, was posted publicly across the University’s Parkville campus. In this staff email, which is dated August 2023 and addressed to the then Dean of Melbourne Law School Professor Matthew Harding, Descheemaeker self-describes as “a scholar, a world-class one” at “what he thought was a world class faculty”. Descheemaeker’s correspondence with the Dean followed the public announcement of a Cultural Safety Review of MLS, which was provoked by the resignation of several Aboriginal staff members within MLS, including Larrakia, Wadjigan and Central Arrente man Professor Eddie Cubbillo and Brinja Yuin lecturer, researcher and community advocate Associate Professor Amanda Porter. Following his resignation as the Associate Dean, Cubillo described MLS as “the most culturally unsafe place I’ve worked”. 

In his correspondence with Harding, the white French-born Professor expressed that he “no longer feels ‘culturally safe’, or indeed safe at all, when I walk into our building”. Describing MLS as “an ideological re-education camp”, Descheemaeker suggested that the proposed review would result in the production of “by-laws” within the School: “everytime we do not concern ourselves with their egotistic preoccupations, we commit genocide”. Contending that “celebrating the ‘noble savage’ is already the main, if not exclusive, thing MLS appears to exist for”, Descheemaeker describes acknowledgements of Country as “non-existing claims to land… acknowledged about every 10 feet in our corridors”. Calling upon the Dean to take a stand against the “‘Blak’ activists”, Descheemaeker asserted that  “this madness has to come to an end”. It is important to note, that this is not the first time that Descheemaeker has been accused of racism and anti-Indigenous sentiment which he has previously been criticised for regarding his commentary on Kanaky.

Much like Oguzhan’s case, Descheemaeker’s leaked email has gained media attention—perhaps unsurprisingly not from the Murdoch Press—with articles published by The Age and The National Indigenous Times. Unlike in Oguzhan’s case, there has been no rapid termination in response to an email known about for over a year, and the University Provost has not confirmed any details regarding Descheemaeker’s correspondence to the media. The University’s only response has been to offer counselling to its staff and students, commenting on the public record that Descheemaeker’s email may have “upset or offended people who read it”. While University officials confirmed the investigation of one of their Muslim sessional tutors and arguably enabled him to be doxxed by Murdoch press, Professor Michelle Foster, the current Dean of MLS, stated publicly that she could not confirm if Descheemaeker has faced disciplinary action for this correspondence, citing confidentiality protections. 

This racialised and selective application of University censure is further reflected in its failure to act upon a series of public statements by University Councillor Mark Leibler, one of Australia’s most well known Zionist lobbyists and a member of the highest governing body of the University. On X he has repeatedly called the dissenting Jewish Council of Australia, which includes staff at the University, the “Jew Haters Council of Australia” (starting on 27 February 2024), saying it was composed of “anti-Semitic Jews” (4 March 2024) who are “shunned overwhelmingly by all self respecting Jews” (1 May 2024). This year he approvingly retweeted the White House announcement that ICE had detained and imprisoned US student Mahmoud Khalil (13 March) and tweeted that Jews who level allegations of genocide against Israel were “repulsive and revolting human beings” and “vicious antisemites” whose relatives murdered by the Nazis “will undoubtedly be turning in their graves” (11 February). It seems that in practice the University’s repeated commitments to stopping antisemitism do not extend to supporting anti-Zionist Jewish staff and students on campus who are well aware of Leibler’s views and the impunity with which he expresses them. 

The University of Melbourne’s Indigenous Strategy, Murmuk Djerring, was launched on 16 August 2023, just four days after Descheemaeker’s correspondence with the Dean of MLS. In Murmuk Djerring, the University expresses a commitment to supporting Indigenous life, culture and history. University wide correspondence from Professor Barry Judd, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), on 15 September 2023, stated “there is no place for racism at the University of Melbourne and Murmuk Djerring—which was shaped by Indigenous staff members—makes this absolutely clear. If we are to achieve our ambition to be the University of choice for Indigenous Australians, we must learn from the painful experiences of Dr Cubillo and others”. Murmuk Djerring is one arm of the University of Melbourne’s broader antiracism strategy, operating alongside the Anti-Racism Action Plan 2024-2027.

Nigerian American philosopher Olúfémi Táíwò defines “elite capture”  as a tendency of social systems whereby elites at the top of relative hierarchies appropriate political movements, ideas, or resources intended to serve marginalised groups, redirecting them to serve elite interests instead. The University of Melbourne’s adoption of the language of antiracism while reproducing racist, colonial and imperialist violence is an example of elite capture at work. According to Táíwò, elite capture occurs when the language and goals of justice are absorbed into dominant institutions as an effective strategy to neutralise radical demands. Here, the elitist institution of the University of Melbourne captures discourses of antiracism and decolonisation, resulting in a spectacle that does little to materially advance racialised and colonised people’s interests as a whole. While some individuals may benefit from the institutional absorption of antiracism rhetoric, many do not. Overall, elite capture benefits elites, by working to shield them from critique and substantive change. 

Throughout the Murmuk Djerring policy, the University uses the phrase “so-called Australia”—language that has been used within grassroots social movements to reject the normalcy of ongoing settler colonial occupation. As of 2018, the University’s estate consisted of a property portfolio of over 400 University-owned buildings, yet Murmuk Djerring does not specify any plans for the University to give land back  or pay the rent to the Wurundjeri, Boon Wurrung, Yorta Yorta or Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. The reason that processes of elite capture are so effective is because they constrain the ability of scholars and organisers to critique institutional policy without implicating the individuals and communities whose efforts we in fact stand in solidarity with. Murmuk Djerring was created in consultation with many Traditional Owners and Elders from Aboriginal language groups in Victoria. Our critique of the University’s antiracism strategy is in no way directed at the sovereign Aboriginal people involved in the processes that resulted in the Murmuk Djerring policy, but rather, at how the adoption of antiracist discourse by the University works to conceal how the University materially reproduces settler colonial and imperial violences. Through the occupation of Aboriginal Land and the production of research that contributes to the development of instruments, techniques, discourses, and devices of racial-colonial violence (including in industries involving weapons, mining, prison, police, education, and social work that are regularly used to justify the destruction of Indigenous lives and Land), the University reproduces the systems that bring Indigenous people closer to death—including Palestinian and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. 

The expulsion of students, termination of staff and the University’s highly selective disciplinary processes form a pattern. They all speak to the weaponisation and elite capture of the language of antiracism, cultural safety and antisemitism to shut down opposition to racial-colonial and imperial violence. Both Deescheemaeker and Leibler wield the language of ‘safety’ against ‘hatred’. It is a pattern reflected in the wider Australian university landscape where we have seen vicious media pile ons and punitive university action against Indigenous and Palestinian academics who are framed in media as leaders in antisemitic hatred (for example, Munanjahli and South Sea Islander Professor Chelsea Watego faces an university initiated external investigation of her Centre’s January antiracism symposium and Palestinian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has had her ARC grant and job suspended). When the language of antiracism is being used by actors like Donald Trump and Peter Dutton to justify their moral panics and own forms of exclusion, we must ask hard questions about how this language is operating. As Cornell historian Enzo Traverso argues: “equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism kills three birds with one stone, striking at anti-colonialism, anti-racism and Jewish nonconformism”, and turns “the fight against antisemitism into a cudgel to use against immigrants and minorities associated with Islam and to bring them into line”. 

So what do the recent events that have unfolded at the University of Melbourne teach us? Put simply, institutions like the University of Melbourne that are invested in the reproduction of  racial-colonial and imperial power, cannot and will never uphold antiracism in material and meaningful ways. These recent events illuminate how the language of ‘antiracism’ is neutralised and domesticated by the University of Melbourne to secure its futurity as a colonial and imperial enterprise. By capturing antiracist discourses the University is able to position itself as a redeemable and reformable project, whilst simultaneously reinscribing its function as an attendant institution of the settler colonial state. Such events ultimately reveal how the University of Melbourne is mobilising antiracism as an effective strategy of what teacher, scholar, organiser and collaborator Dylan Rodríguez has termed liberal counterinsurgency.

But that doesn’t mean that we stop organising. 

The racial-colonial violence of the University has long been resisted by staff, students and community members and there is a long history of anticolonial and antiracist organising on campus. Organising on university campuses is an essential task if we are to effectively develop the skills and infrastructures of resistance that are needed to prepare us for moments of rupture within economic and ecological crises—when substantial transformations of power can take place. Most recently, the pro-Palestine student-led movements have revealed, strengthened and emboldened what Moten and Harney have described as the Undercommons: networks of trust between radicals where active collaboration takes place to resist the University’s violences.   

In the email leaked last week, Descheemaeker stated “there is absolutely no end to where the Blak activist means to take us—expect destruction”. Much like the Blak activist who Descheemaeker refers to with “a sticker on her office door showing a police car burning up”, we too believe in the generative possibilities of destruction. Abolitionist and anti/decolonial scholars and organisers remind us that the destruction of certain systems of power and ways of knowing, doing and being creates the grounds for futurity. As Quechuan scholar​ Sandy Grande explains, “decolonisation and abolition are not simply calls to destroy, they are demands to care, and make kin, and nourish relations as a means of creating and maintaining social arrangements that enable life and breath”.

Our current climate of political repression at the University of Melbourne reinforces why it is imperative that we continue to build autonomous intellectual homes that are grounded in Indigenous sovereignty, solidarity, and tangible commitments to anticolonial and antiracist praxis—collectives of what Chelsea Watego has termed “nerds on the frontlines”. These spaces open up possibilities for radical transformation by building networks of relations that can sustain us beyond the economic, political and ecological crisis accelerating all around us.

Photo credit: “Melbourne University” by Geoff Penaluna, CC BY 2.0