The students involved in the trespassing of Professor Steven Prawer’s office should be expelled from the University and charged with criminal trespassing. First, let me provide some context as to what transpired, before articulating why it is imperative that a line is now drawn in the sand and further antisocial acts such as this are no longer tolerated.
I opened my emails on Thursday morning to a letter from Duncan Muskell, The Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, addressed to the wider University community. The email began, ‘Yesterday a small group of people entered an academic staff member’s office in an attempt to harass and intimidate him.’
The Australian reported in further detail:
‘Anti-Israel protesters trespassed in a Jewish physics professor’s office, accusing him of being a ‘war criminal’ during a sit-in protest that ended only when police were called. Professor Steven Prawer had been individually targeted by the protesters for the past few weeks… At the latest protest, students affixed stickers in the office that accused Professor Prawer of being a ‘war criminal’ and saying ‘Zionists are genocidal maniacs’ – and then shared the images on social media. About a dozen protesters appeared to be sitting around his office, some masked and draped in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, chanting for an end to ties with Israeli universities.’
Muskell conveyed in his letter that ‘if the people who were involved [in the incident] can be identified as University of Melbourne staff members or students, we will not hesitate to initiate disciplinary processes’. This will not be a difficult task, considering the students involved were arrogant and brazen enough to post their immature and disrespectful intrusion over social media, on the ‘unimelbforpalestine’ and ‘freepalestinecoalition.naarm’. Students can be heard chanting, ‘You’re supporting genocide, Unimelb you can’t hide, Unimelb cut the ties!’
As Muskell aptly declared:
‘This type of behaviour is completely and utterly unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to the values we hold as a university. There are no circumstances whatsoever where a member of our University community should be targeted in this way… Everyone has a right to be safe at work and this is enshrined in law. Colleagues also have a right to be able to do their job without being or feeling threatened. Intentional acts of intimidation, violence, vilification or antisemitism against members of our community will not be tolerated.’
Indeed, the behaviour by these individuals is way beyond the pale, it is utterly disgraceful.
The email from Muskell was excellent and he should be commended for his leadership on the issue thus far, particularly the decision to call the police on the intruders. Now, however, will come the true test. Let us see words put into action, and all students allegedly involved in this act of intimidation, and criminal trespassing, expelled from the University. This will send a clear, unequivocal message that these acts will not be tolerated.
A line in the sand is long overdue
Graduating from my BA in History at Melbourne in 2020, and having recently completed my Masters in Political Economy at King’s College London, I have had front-row seats to this sort of uncivilised behaviour and witnessed the progressive escalation of aggressive campus activism. For too long now, universities across the West have kowtowed to belligerent methods by student activists.
To the best of my knowledge, there were no serious repercussions for any of the students involved in the occupation of certain campus buildings at the University in May this year. As the ABC reported at the time, ‘Pro-Palestinian protesters spent the night occupying a University of Melbourne building in Parkville, the university said it had asked the students to leave the building but they refused.’ Some staff members called off classes due to the disruption caused. By appeasing this behaviour, it is further encouraged.
A note on freedom of speech
I am a strong advocate of freedom of speech and a believer in classical liberal values. But let us be clear. Freedom of speech does not entitle you to criminally trespass and aggressively intimidate those that you disagree with. I make this point because I will wager that the participants in this pathetic spectacle will cry out about their ‘right to free speech’ and ‘right to protest’. Which of course is ironic, since many of these students are calling on in defence of their behaviour a value system that many of them would presumably love to see destroyed (i.e., liberal democracy and the basic tenets of a free society).
I have no doubt that many of the students involved are active members of the various Socialist/Marxist clubs at the University. I would further wager, that a greater irony yet, is that many of these students are likely to be inclined toward arguing that ‘words are harm’, and that they may have the proclivity to censor anyone that they disagree with, having no tolerance for diversity of opinion if it is not the ‘correct’ opinion (i.e., their opinion).
What is most apparent is that these students are seemingly intellectually incapable of producing a robust argument in defence of their position, and hence they must resort to violence and intimidation. This type of protest is typical of radical left-wing groups, notably the likes of Antifa, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and so on. Take for example the climate activists who threw soup on Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, to which the UK court justly handed prison terms. As the judge in this particular case articulated to the alleged perpetrators, ‘You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it. You do not [have this right].’ This same sense of condescending moral superiority is evident in the actions of the students who stormed Professor Prawer’s private office.
We need to uphold the values of freedom of speech and the right to protest in a free society. But that does not include aggressive intimidation of other individuals which we do not agree with, or any illegal acts of destruction. This is the case, irrespective of whatever the issue is at hand. Which is a smooth segue into the specific topic of relevance.
The issue at hand
It goes without saying that the ongoing events in the Middle East, broadly speaking, is one of the most polarising and emotive issues at the present time. Even so, wherever one sits with regards to this issue, it is absolutely never an excuse to conduct oneself in such an intimidatory fashion, targeting an individual. No matter how heated the issue, the behaviour exhibited was reprehensible.
As a student of history and politics it has been deeply alarming to witness the pervasive ignorance of history, the oversimplification of this issue and others into a Marxist structuralist framework, and the swathes of propaganda on social media being distributed by highly educated citizens of Western countries. Propaganda – on this issue in particular – is rife on social media. It is an intractable problem, and the solution is most certainly not the anti-liberal censorious ‘Misinformation and Disinformation’ Laws proposed by the Albanese government.
Moreover, it seems that many forget that the eruption of violence was ignited by the events of October 7 2023, in which Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australian law, indiscriminately murdered ‘more than 1,200 men, women and children, including citizens of more than 30 countries – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Girls and women were sexually assaulted’. A further irony, which I alluded to in my article Religion as a political football, is that many (not all) on the progressive left will continue to support proscribed terrorist organisations that treat women as second class citizens and homosexuals as criminals, while simultaneously supporting the most progressive causes in Western countries. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
It is appropriate to conclude this article with the words of Muskell, who signed off his email with the following:
‘This University is animated by foundational academic and human values, including respect for diversity of opinion, fostering respectful debate, supporting free intellectual inquiry within the bounds of ethics and the law, and respect for all people, irrespective of race, religion, gender or origin… Anyone who seeks to intimidate, harass or target other individuals is not welcome at the University of Melbourne… We cannot allow what happened yesterday to be repeated. I exhort everyone in our community to come together and stand against such attacks on our colleagues and our values.’
Hear, hear. Enough is enough. It’s time for some real consequences for this deplorable behaviour. It’s time for some real leadership.
If the University is indeed serious about protecting free speech on campus against this kind of intimidatory behaviour, then they will expel any students involved. Not a mere slap on the wrist, that will not do. It’s time we start standing up to these pathetic bullies that are so incapable of articulating themselves that they simply resort to tactics of intimidation.
