Professor Mark Scott failed anti-Semitism exam: University elite comes under pressure over hatred on campus

For two decades, Sydney educational and broadcasting administrator Mark Scott has been a master at avoiding taking sides.

This week, the Sydney University Vice-Chancellor, former ABC managing director and ex-Fairfax editorial director was forced to face up to the consequences of his offend-no one leadership style.

At the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion he offered a partial and belated apology to Jewish students who felt abandoned when he allowed an anti-Israel encampment on campus for months during the Israel-Hamas war.

For many Jews, the Sydney University situation was emblematic of the broader problem: the establishment refused to protect them in the face of a well-organised and aggressive movement supporting the Palestinians.

This week Commissioner Virginia Bell and her staff examined anti-Semitism on university campuses.

Home to young people with a lot of time, energy and strong beliefs about social justice, universities emerged after the start of the war in Gaza as strongholds of anti-Israel sentiment.

Ms Bell is wrestling with the question of whether opposition to the war Israel fought against Hamas morphed into harassment and hatred towards Jews in general.

She heard evidence that demonstrated how hostility towards Israel, now the Middle East’s leading military power, has overwhelmed the sympathy towards Jews following the Holocaust in World War II.

On Friday, she heard evidence from David Slucki, the director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. A specialist in teaching academics how to deal with anti-Jewish behaviour, Professor Slucki said students arrived at class agitated by social media feeds “designed to generate rage, anger and hostility”.

Violent images created “a kind of all-or-nothing thinking”, he said, making it difficult for students to understand the other side’s position.

Earlier in the week one Jewish student described attending extermination camps in Europe with peers who treated the sites as tourist destinations. “People were doing TikTok dances in the carparks of Auschwitz and concentration camps,” Paris Lenten told the inquiry.

“If you’re going to be giggling in the Auschwitz carpark, you’re not a friend to Jews.”

Of course, the purpose of universities is as much to socialise young people into decent human beings as teach them how the world works. This week’s evidence suggested they are struggling with both.

Wearing a Jewish skullcap, physics professor Steven Prawer described how 20 masked intruders entered his Melbourne University office in 2024 and chanted: “Prawer, Prawer, you can’t hide, you’re guilty of genocide.”

“I think that the students broke all the rules of academic discourse that we treasure in the university,” he told the inquiry.

At Sydney University, Professor Scott, pictured, watched as protesters erected more than 100 tents on what had been a pleasant the lawn of the university’s quadrangle. Among them were members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist organisation now banned in Australia.

Professor Scott decided to wait and negotiate. He had seen violence erupt at US colleges when campus police forces broke up similar camps, he told the royal commission, and did not want to enter a cycle of protest and retaliation in Sydney.

On Wednesday he told the inquiry he had later come to learn how threatening the camp was to Jewish students, many of whom were too fearful to walk nearby.

“I am sorry to them that it took so long for us to get it done, and I’m sorry we did not keep them more closely engaged in dialogue and listen more intently to them as it was going on,” he told the inquiry.

His explanation got no sympathy from Jewish leaders. Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said Professor Scott should not lead the university.

“He had the power to act, and on his own evidence he eventually used it,” Mr Leibler said.

“The encampment came down when the university’s lawns needed repair. He found the power to protect the lawns. He never found it to protect Jewish students.”

Next week the inquiry will continue to hold hearings in Melbourne and switch focus to security arrangements for the Jewish community.