The Attack on Palestinian Universities

Jacobin, 30 December 2018. Read the original here. Israel’s efforts to cripple higher education in occupied Palestine continued relentlessly in 2018, with Israeli universities acting as key tools of the occupation. The systematic punishment inflicted on Palestinian academics and students didn’t attract anything like the global attention of Gazans’ March of Return, but it deserves…

Lessons from the Yellow Vests? Some thoughts on unions, ‘recruitment’ and ‘mobilisation’

If the French Yellow Vests have had such impact in the absence of any of the usual structures of organised unionism, what are the implications for how those structures might need to be rethought?

If Israel Was A School Shooter There Would Be A Moral Debate

New Matilda, May 19, 2018. Original here. Israel’s killing of at least 60 Palestinians at the Gaza boundary fence on Monday defied the 24-hour news cycle and stayed firmly in the headlines most of the week. For good reason: on its own, Monday’s death toll constituted over half of the one hundred and eleven people…

Nakba Day: The Palestinian Slaughter Goes On But A Path To Peace Is Still Possible

New Matilda, May 15, 2018. Original here. Today is Nakba (‘catastrophe’) Day, when Palestinians commemorate the cataclysm of their expulsion from their homes in 1948. The most important voices to hear today are theirs: before they read Western commentators, anyone who cares about the tragedy of the Middle East should read Palestinian ones. There could…

Ramsay course offers stark choice to Australian universities

Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2018. Read the original here. Pared down to its essentials, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation course confronts Australian vice-chancellors with a stark choice: are they willing to let their institutions’ authority to be used to bolster xenophobia and national chauvinism in our society? The entire educational mission of the…

Weaponising Learning

Sydney Review of Books, 12 June, 2018. Read the original here. Suddenly, the right has discovered an enthusiasm for funding universities. Not with public money, of course: the government’s moratorium on Commonwealth grant funding – retribution for the Senate’s ongoing refusal to legislate fee rises and funding cuts – remains truculently in place. Instead, government…

Boycotting Eurovision: Why Aren’t Progressives Doing More For Palestine?

New Matilda, 23 October 2018. Original here. Last week’s announcement that the government is open to moving Australia’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem caused consternation among progressives and, indeed, most reasonable people. As if Morrison’s irresponsible bid for the Zionist vote in Wentworth wasn’t enough, Australia last week also joined Israel and the US in…

Not just a culture war: the Ramsay Centre and Sydney University

With David Brophy. Overland, 19 September 2018. Read the original here. The best that can be said about the Ramsay Centre’s proposal to sponsor an elite course in Western civilisation is that it has revived a flagging discussion about the intellectual and political considerations that shape the humanities curricula of Australian universities. But instead of…

Syria – no easy or good answers, but bombs don’t lead to peace

Photo credit: Vlaudin Vega, original here. Speech given at the 'Syria: Stop the Bombing' protest called by the Sydney Stop the War Coalition, 18 April, 2018. Other speeches from Maher Jamous, Dima Al'Msody and Mehreen Faruqi. Why are we protesting outside the US consulate this evening? Not because we have one iota of support for…

BDS – a global intifada for justice and peace in Palestine

Israeli Apartheid Week protest, Sydney, March 18 2018. We’re standing today with millions of people in Palestine and around the world. Our demands are modest. We’re calling for the bare minimum that anyone committed to peace and justice should be demanding: an end to apartheid in Israel – now; the release of Ahed Tamimi and…