Australian universities in the Gaza genocide: managerial capitulation, staff and student resistance

The continuation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza into 2025, along with the extension of heavy military attacks into Lebanon and the West Bank, increased the frequency and depth of pro-Palestine activism from staff and students in Australian higher education. In the same period, Zionist-led attacks on the campus-based Palestine solidarity movement intensified significantly – a major component of the wider campaign of repression of anti-Zionism and opposition to the genocide in civil society in Australia, as throughout the global north. In this update to our ‘Palestine Solidarity and Zionist Backlash in Australian Universities’ (Bayeh and Riemer, this volume), we address five developments in the ongoing struggle for Palestine on Australian campuses: the adoption of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) motions in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and student BDS advocacy on campuses; Gaza solidarity encampments in universities around the country; the escalation of Zionist persecution against campus Palestine advocates; increasing government pressure on academic anti-Zionism, and university administrations’ introduction of highly repressive restrictions on campus political expression. Overall, the fortunes of Palestine solidarity in Australian universities since October 7, 2023, illustrate continuing activism among staff and students, and the thorough-going capitulation of university leaderships to the supporters of genocidal crime, as well as their unashamed abandonment of any residual liberal understanding of the university as a site of critique or dissent.