Letter
Uni codes of conduct versus academic free speech
Excellent article by Greg Barns. A science academic for four decades, I strongly objected to Codes of Conduct constraining academic free speech, and 25 years ago published a detailed critique entitled “Current censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities” that concluded “We should publicly insist that universities that constrain free speech are not fit for our children”.
As illustrated by the shocking Bendigo Writers Festival censorship debacle, free speech-constraining codes of conduct are now in place in Australian universities and threaten academic free speech and Australia’s $40 billion per annum education export industry. The Big Eight universities and numerous other Australian universities have disgracefully adopted a version of the highly flawed definition of antisemitism espoused by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to which Australia and 34 other European countries belong and which has been condemned by scholars worldwide and, indeed, by more than 40 anti-racist Jewish organisations.
The IHRA is anti-Jewish antisemitic and anti-Arab antisemitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of apartheid Israel as assertedly “antisemitic”) and Holocaust-denying (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and, indeed, some 70 genocide and holocaust atrocities).
— Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria