The French Report

We've been hearing oodles in Murdoch's Australian, about the Report of the Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers, March 2019, drawn up by former Chief Justice of the High Court Robert French, all of it designed to detract from French's key finding here:

"Repeated incidents in Australia in recent times do not establish a systemic pattern of action by higher education providers or student representative bodies, adverse to freedom of speech or intellectual inquiry in the higher education sector."

Instead, The Australian has ignored this key finding and homed in exclusively on French's reference to the adoption of a voluntary free speech code.

According to Sydney University's student paper, honisoit.com:

"Freedom of speech incidents at USyd represent the overwhelming majority of incidents amongst Australian universities if a 2018 audit by the conservative think tank Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), cited in the review, is to be believed."

(Note that the IPA audit was conducted by Matthew Lesh, formerly political affairs director of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS)).

And why has Sydney University, in particular, come under such scrutiny? Sydney University English department academic Nick Riemer here hits the nail squarely on the head with his quoted (in bold) comment in the following Sydney Morning Herald report:

"The John Howard-helmed Ramsey Centre's struggles to find a home for its degree in Western civilisation has prompted many to accuse the campuses of left-wing bias, but one of the most outspoken critics disagrees. Nick Riemer says universities are not full of lefties. 'The faculty that's in focus is the arts faculty,' he says. Claims it is dominated by cultural Marxists are 'nonsense. Most academics there are centrists'. In fact, he argues, his more left-wing colleagues are the ones under most pressure. 'The biggest irony about all of this is the freedom of speech code will I bet not be applied to the group that is most in need of it in my view, which is Palestine advocates,' he says." (Embracing comfortable ideas, Jordan Baker, 22/6/19)

So, absent Sydney University's arts faculty's courageously standing up for Palestinian rights, there would be no particular focus on Sydney University at all, no audit by the IPA's Matthew Lesh, and ultimately no French Report.

As Riemer points out, advocating for Palestine simply cannot be tolerated by the enemies of the Palestinians in this country. It is they, not the campus Zionists, who are in need of the protection of any campus free speech code which may be adopted.

(See, in particular, my 16/9/14 post Behind AUJS's Campus Offensive and remember that 2014 was the year of Israel's most brutal ever onslaught against the Gaza Strip, Operation Protective Edge, which necessitated an unprecedented PR blitz from Israel's propaganda outlets in the West, including Australia. Context is all.)

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

"At least 81 Palestinians were injured on Friday afternoon in clashes [sic] between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers in the eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, medics said. Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, told reporters that 79 people as well as two paramedics had various injuries in clashes [sic] with the Israeli soldiers... " (81 Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip, xinhuanet.com, 22/6/19)