Jewish students and staff at the University of Adelaide expressed frustration after it rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism last week without seeking their input, the Australian Jewish News reported.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) co-CEO Peter Wertheim noted that the university has not taken steps to make the campus safe for Jewish students after multiple antisemitic incidents in the last year, including its student magazine On Dit calling for “Death to Israel.”
Wertheim told the AJN that complaints about the article being on the magazine’s website “have been met with silence and inaction by the university.”
A spokesperson for the university denounced antisemitism but told the news outlet that the rejection of the IHRA definition was over free speech.
“We proudly encourage critical thinking and respectful debate. Freedom of speech is a right everyone holds, subject to the law. The right to express lawful views about controversial matters is at the heart of a robust democracy. It is also the essence of academic freedom,” the spokesperson said.
Wertheim noted that four Australian universities have adopted the IHRA definition.
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler called the university’s decision “most unfortunate”.
“Its reasoning shows an unwillingness to engage with what the IHRA definition is and isn’t,” he told the AJN. “I would have thought that a university, of all places, would seek to properly engage with an issue before rejecting it out of hand.”
The move by the University of Adelaide came only weeks after Australian National University in Canberra rejected the IHRA definition, shortly after the Parliamentary Friends of IHRA sent an open letter to Australian universities encouraging them to officially adopt the definition.