In times of age old professionalism, it was reasonable to make requests to leaders of powerful institutions and expect a reply, but in times unduly influenced by the alleged efficiency of managerialism, public interests and requests are too often ignored.

That process and outcome occurred in relation to the ANU vice-chancellor’s non-replies to letters sent by speakers at a public meeting, “Vote for Humanity, Why Genocide is a Key Election Issue” held in a lecture theatre at the Australian National University on Sunday 27 March.

Those speakers should be named: John Menadue, editor-in-chief of Pearls & Irritations; Ali Kazak, former Palestinian ambassador to Australia; Dr Sue Wareham, president, Medical Association for the Prevention of War; Dr Peter Slezak, former associate professor of Philosophy, UNSW; Moussa Hijazi, Australian Palestinian lawyer.

As a member of Australians for Humanity, I was responsible for chairing the meeting.

Before a capacity audience, we damned the government’s silence over genocide in Gaza, and pleaded that principles of humanity be preserved in crafting public policy. We examined abuses of power in the lives of Indigenous Australians, and acknowledged the value of student protests about the slaughter of Palestinians, disproportionately women and children.

In the heady atmosphere of an election campaign, the existence of that meeting, let alone the contents, would have been largely unknown if The Australian newspaper had not stirred controversy by referring to the ANU event in a 29 April article headed, “Ex-Mandarin likens Hamas to Mandela”.

“The ‘ex Mandarin’,” one of the speakers at the ANU meeting, was John Menadue, former ambassador to Japan, former secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, and former chief executive of Qantas. In his appraisal of accusations of terrorism aimed at silencing critics of Israeli brutalities, Menadue explained, “the real terrorists in Gaza are the ministers in the Israeli Government and leaders of the IDF”.

This one sentence prompted The Australian to perceive the ANU as complicit in antisemitism by allowing ANU students to have booked the theatre, hence the newspaper’s accusation that, despite the federal Senate’s recent inquiry into alleged university-wide prejudice against Jewish students, the ANU had not learned its lesson.

To emphasise the lesson which ANU management was supposed to learn, the newspaper quoted Peter Wertheim, director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, as saying: “The ANU has further compromised its credibility as an institution of higher learning.”

A year earlier, pro-Palestine students had camped at the university and judged that university management had been unduly influenced by the Zionist/Israeli lobby into thinking that student protests against Israeli slaughter must be antisemitic.

The ANU had eventually asked student encampments to disband. The vice-chancellor admitted to receiving an irate phone call from former treasurer Josh Frydenburg and, at a Senate Estimates hearing, would not confirm or deny if the university used private investigators to monitor the social media activity of student protesters. Student leaders claimed a witch hunt was taking place. Student Beatrice Tucker was expelled for comments regarded as supporting a terrorist organisation, Hamas. In retrospect, this gutsy, principled student’s judgment was no different to that made by Menadue on 27 April.

In response to accusations made by The Australian newspaper, with a view to defending the ANU’s decision to allow the “Vote for Humanity” meeting, we wrote to Vice-Chancellor Professor Genevieve Bell. We aimed to set the record straight, confirmed that comments about struggles for justice could not be construed as anti-Jewish, and we resisted politicians’ claims that antisemitism was widespread on university campuses .

We supported students’ defence of free speech, a matter of particular significance given the prominent (Go8) vice-chancellors’ decision that, in assessments of student and staff activities, the narrow Go8 definition of antisemitism be imposed and strictly applied.

We finished that letter by requesting an opportunity to discuss significant issues, such as claims about antisemitism, the significance of students’ rights to protest, and the undue influence on public understanding of barbarities in Gaza by a lobby backed by a national newspaper.

We sent an email to Professor Bell on 30 April and sent the same letter by registered mail on 1 May. We waited for a reply, even a circular type acknowledgement that the letter had been received.

We considered that however busy the leaders of universities may be, there remains a courtesy and professional value in responding to requests.

We also regarded our defence of the ANU meeting as having national significance and therefore continued to wait. On 9 May, we wrote again, this time suggesting a reply by 14 May.

Nothing happened. Professor Bell continued to be inaccessible, outwardly indifferent to our requests and seemingly out of touch with the “Vote for Humanity” issues which concerned that large ANU audience.

It might seem presumptuous that we should even consider writing to a vice-chancellor and request a meeting, but we did so, aware that every day, to no avail, thousands of citizens nowhere near as privileged as us seek help and advice by knocking on doors, making telephone calls and writing letters. In too many cases, nothing much happens.

If influential institutions are to remain constructive features of responsibly sensitive democracies, writing letters to request meetings must survive as a means of accountability.

An opposite trend has become common. Ignoring correspondence is a deplorable administrative practice, just one of the persistent human costs incurred by the so-called efficiency of managerialism.