We, the undersigned, write to express our condemnation of the decision by the Education Minister Jason Clare to request the Australian Research Council (ARC) to investigate the Future Fellowship of Macquarie University academic Randa Abdel-Fattah “as a matter of priority”.

In the face of genocide and apartheid, the Federal Government’s response has not been to impose sanctions on Israel, but rather to open a parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism on campuses that acquiesces to the political pressures of Zionist lobbying and empowers university administrators to repress pro-Palestinian activism under the guise of safety and inclusion.

Last week, five police officers turned up on my doorstep. They didn’t have a warrant to arrest me or search the house, but they insisted on coming inside and looking for me. They walked into my room as I was climbing out of bed and placed me under arrest. One officer stayed in the room while I stripped down to get dressed, telling my objecting housemate “it’s so she doesn’t jump out the window.”

We support the right for students to protest. We share their concerns about the University of Melbourne’s complicity in Israel’s human rights violations, and the need to uphold international law. We support the demand to end academic and financial ties with Israeli universities, and implore the University of Melbourne to uphold its internal commitments and international obligations.

La Trobe University has yet to speak out on this critical international human rights issue. Now is the time for La Trobe University to join the global movement advocating for justice for Palestinians.

In Yousef’s memory — but also in remembrance of my grandfather, and in honour of my parents, refugees across three continents — and in a spirit of hope without optimism, I call for the Australian government to create a humanitarian visa for Palestinians. I also call for Australia to fulfill its international obligations by withdrawing all support, direct and indirect, for Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory — starting with an arms embargo.

We unequivocally condemn the racism that Australian political leaders and authorities have shown towards Palestinians, particularly to Palestinian visa applicants from Gaza since October 2023. Australian political leaders and authorities have failed dismally to provide Palestinians with meaningful access to asylum and safety.

We, the undersigned Deakin University staff and students, oppose Deakin’s disciplinary measures against students for participation in the Deakin Gaza Solidarity Encampment. We affirm our support for freedom of speech and the right to protest on campus.

As a researcher focused on Australian social work’s complicity in settler-colonialism, these acts of solidarity had me thinking about what social work institutions are doing to mobilise against what Israeli historian and genocide studies scholar Raz Segal has called a “textbook case of genocide.” The answer is, at least publicly, very little.

We demand an end to university ties with weapons manufacturers.

We, the undersigned, represent both diverse academic disciplines and various professional vocations at Australian universities, but we are united in our support for free speech on university campuses, student and community safety, and the peaceful and historically significant, student-led encampments established at ten universities across Australia.

Following university encampment protests dotting the US map, the Students for Palestine organisation worked with the University of Sydney’s Students’ Representative Council, Sydney University Muslim Students Association and the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network to kickstart a protest at Australian universities, calling for an end to ties to weapons manufacturers like Thales and Raytheon, and educational institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

We the undersigned members of the Victoria University community, sign this petition, to urgently appeal to Victoria University to take a principled stance against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people.

Some feelings have the weight of hegemony behind them. Some other feelings are dissident. For those of us who are colonisers, then, the question becomes: how to ensure humility, and cultivate the practice of decentring ourselves and our feelings. How to always be in a position of learning. How to ensure our emotions are not nationalist or selfish or work in the service of building bounded and closed-off groups.

Our community is one of action and activism, informed by histories and imaginings of Jewish and other resistance. In our anticolonial work, we are explicitly anti-Zionist and work for a free Palestine. We take on this work not to centre or salvage Judaism and Jewishness, but to oppose settler colonialism in all its forms, and to acknowledge the specific and necessary role of Jewish anti-Zionists in opposing violence done in our names. 

We, the undersigned teachers, academics, students, and alumni of Aotearoa New Zealand secondary schools and universities stand together in condemning organisations that have sought to undermine this freedom in relation to the current situation in Israel and Palestine and we express our full solidarity with and support for educators and researchers who have faced attempts to inhibit and limit their scholarship on this topic.