At the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine
Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese
On a rainy mid-July morning, we made our way to the Law Lounge at Sydney University for one of two live hearings to be conducted by the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine. If the famed sandstone quadrangle and leafy outlook from the lounge evoked a certain vision of the university for some in the audience, that vision proved very much at odds with what was to unfold during the day. The repressive conditions that framed the very ground of the hearing were highlighted by an opening statement mandated by the university, both a disclaimer of and a warning about what was to follow. And beyond this immediate institutional warning was the wider horizon of threat from the report issued earlier in the week by the government’s chosen envoy for antisemitism, with its recommendations for censoring and defunding a range of cultural institutions, including universities.
Already, when it comes to the case of the genocide in Gaza, our higher education institutions have shown themselves deeply wanting: wanting in their commitment to free speech and academic freedom; wanting in their commitment to a spirit of inquiry that is impervious to political pressure by powerful lobbies; and wanting as to transparent processes that are committed to the well-being of students and staff.
Among the testimonies we heard from students and staff at a range of NSW institutions:
Undergraduate students being issued with summons to defend themselves on disciplinary misconduct charges that they were not allowed to discuss with anyone else. Where students were allowed to bring a support person, that person was bound to remain silent throughout the proceedings. Students repeatedly referred to the sense of isolation and fear created by this edict of silence.
Student clubs and associations being subjected to intolerable pressures and on occasion disbanded.
An anonymous student testified to being warned and then reported by her lecturer for making an announcement about an upcoming rally in support of Gaza. Announcements on other rallies and meetings continued to be allowed in the class both before and after the censoring of announcements about Gaza. The student revealed that the lecturer who reported her was also her placement supervisor and said that she had been cautioned by others about the ramifications for her future employment. Yet the student continued courageously to speak out against the lop-sided and unequal implementation of free speech on campus.
A very senior academic testified how, after writing an open letter to his Vice-Chancellor in response to an official communication regarding October 7, he too was issued with certain disciplinary charges that were to be kept confidential. Yet details of his case somehow appeared in the media, and most chillingly, recordings of gun shots were left on his phone. The academic testified too to the intensification of a climate of fear and threat as long-standing colleagues avoided him. A handful of private messages of support could not overcome the isolation and ostracism he experienced on a daily basis. This speaker ended his testimony by saying to the assembled audience, that if he as a senior, white, male academic could be treated in this manner, “they’re coming for you too.”
Another senior academic anonymously testified how her research expertise on a related topic had been previously commended by her university, but in the context of her advocacy on behalf of students protesting for Gaza, was weaponised against her on a charge of bringing her university into disrepute.
At the level of the absurd, following a disciplinary hearing a student was prohibited from using the word “colonisation” for fear of making others feel “unsafe,” despite the word appearing on commemorative plaques throughout the university.
An overseas trans student testified to fear of losing their visa because of their activism on behalf of Gaza, leaving them in fear of very severe consequences if forced to return to their original country
While we have previously come across instances similar to those narrated by the speakers, we want to emphasise the powerful charge produced by their embodied voices and the collective reception of these voices by the audience. The tribunal was a necessary counter to the sense of isolation that the speakers repeatedly referred to. Crucially, it enabled the public evidencing of the disturbing and intricate levels of censorship, surveillance, harassment and punishment that our institutions have mobilised to silence and repress the voices attempting to stop the genocide.
The form of the public tribunal or inquiry, as panel member Gil H. Boehringer wrote in a note accompanying the proceedings, are “common initiatives deployed by people, organizations and communities in order to seek justice of a kind that they… are prevented from achieving by the government (and government-controlled institutions such as universities) and corporations.” As such, the collective power of this people's tribunal also brought into focus the ethical failures of our institutions, underscoring how, in such instances, the genre of the people's tribunal is mobilised to work towards justice in the face of the systemic derogations of state and public institutions.
What was enacted in the course of this people’s tribunal? A participatory network of affective solidarity, attentive listening and affirmative acknowledgement. The disposition of those assembled in the room was constituted by a triangulated structure that bound all parties in a system of relation: the chair and panellists at the front; the witnesses delivering their testimonies facing the panellists and the audience; and, facing both, the audience closed the relational triangle. The collective bodies in the room were engaged in distributed relations of knowledge sharing and affective engagement. In this context, the power of a people’s tribunal can be seen to come into its own as it binds together the bodies of living subjects and their respective bodies of knowledge in a new jurisdictional space that marks, in turn, a field of dissension in relation to the formal authorities that otherwise regulate and control those spaces—here, the governance bodies of NSW universities.
In the contingent moment of coming together, witnesses, panellists and audience embodied a people’s jurisdiction that contested the censoring mechanism of university laws, statutes and interdictions and that materialised a layered violence which operates on three intersecting levels in the spaces of our universities: (1) the complicity of some of our universities in the Gaza genocide through networks of collaboration, surveillance-sharing, research and investment in Israeli arms manufacturers (for example, Elbit Systems) and invited exchanges that enable figures active in the Israeli state killing of Palestinians to speak with impunity in the spaces of publicly-funded institutions of education. For example, as evidenced by one of the witnesses, members of the Israeli Defence Forces were invited onto Sydney University campus for an event that was secreted beyond the reach of any staff or students wishing to protest their presence; (2) the deployment by university authorities of punitive measures against those protesting the Gaza genocide; and (3) the active gaslighting by university authorities of their dissenting students and staff. Thus, the public-facing pronouncements that declaim freedom of speech as a core principle of our universities starkly contradict the behind-the-scenes targeting and punishment of those individuals duly exercising freedom of speech by condemning the genocide in Gaza, producing in some instances an intolerable cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is also produced by universities’ selective exercise of empathy for students who “feel unsafe.” Scant attention is paid to the emotional safety and wellbeing of students grieving the destruction of whole families, neighbourhoods, universities, mosques, churches and other places in Gaza, while also being the target of secret disciplinary processes by their university.
In the course of this people’s tribunal, whenever the emotional toll exacted from the witnesses as they delivered often profoundly traumatic experience became palpable, the chair would stop the proceedings and acknowledge the violence, betrayals and hurt that they had experienced; simultaneously, the audience, in the tradition of the chorus in a drama, would—through gasps, nods and other gestures and sounds—affirm the testimony of the witnesses. In effect, what was productively materialised in the room was more than just a collective acknowledgement of the witnesses: there was a sense of the opening of a space of care on the very ground in which this duty of care had often been brutally denied by the relevant university authorities to the witnesses.
What transpired during the course of this people’s tribunal? A reclamation of the space of ethical dissent by the very constituents of publicly-funded universities: students and staff. We say “reclamation” as universities have been traditionally seen as educational spaces open to practices of critical thinking, ethical dissent and freedom of speech. Yet, as the testimonies delivered by both students and staff evidenced, these democratic practices have been severely compromised, repressed or cancelled when it comes to speaking to and protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Against this repressive apparatus the people’s tribunals offer a space for articulating a point of refusal, one where students, in particular, affirm their determination not to be silenced.
The transformative power of this people's tribunal brought into focus the ethical failures of our higher education institutions, underscoring how, in such instances, we can mobilise the genre of the people's tribunal to work towards justice in the face of the systemic derogations of state and public institutions. It brought into existence a collective practice that reinstated what our universities are currently working so hard to deny: freedom of speech committed to condemning and stopping acts of state violence.
The hearing opened a space that was only offered begrudgingly by the university. Yet from this contingent institutional space—the Law Lounge no less—the participants collectively and publicly enunciated what our universities would otherwise prefer to remain unsaid: that a catastrophic genocide is unfolding in Gaza. From the evidentiary space of this people’s inquiry into the repression of campus free speech on Palestine, a collective voice articulated a scathing indictment of our universities: “J’accuse!”
REFERENCES
Gill H. Boehringer, “Comments on People’s Inquiries: Alternatives for seeking justice.” Accompanying material at the Sydney hearing of the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine, July 14, 2025.
Richard Flannagan, “To defend our democracy, PM must disavow and abandon Segal report.” Sydney Morning Herald, July 18, 2025.
People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine, “’Don’t talk or write about Palestine: it’s a career killer’. Preliminary Report of the People’s Inquiry.” June 2025.
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Suvendrini Perera is John Curtin Distinguished Emerita Professor at Curtin University.
Joseph Pugliese is Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University.