Socialist Alternative row rumbles on
THE Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has hit out at academics who have signed a letter calling for the reinstatement of the Socialist Alternative (SA) Club at Monash University.
THE Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has hit out at academics who have signed a letter calling for the reinstatement of the Socialist Alternative (SA) Club at Monash University.
The club was deregistered earlier this month for acting in a way “prejudicial to the interests of clubs and societies” after it refused a group of Jewish students entry to a recent pro-Palestinian meeting.
Academics from Monash and other institutions have since added their names to an open letter on Facebook calling the deregistration “the most serious attack yet in a nationwide campaign to stifle free speech on university campuses” and calling for it to be overturned.
The letter charges the Monash Students Association with doing Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s “dirty work” in silencing students critical of the government’s budget and higher education policies.
But AUJS political affairs director Matthew Lesh insisted “The deregistration has nothing to do with speech, but rather the action of discrimination against Jewish students which has been undertaken.
“The Socialist Alternative have never denied that they discriminated against Jewish students, an action that they see as fully justified.
“These academics have chosen to put their name to a highly offensive, and fundamentally false, statement that misrepresents the issue completely.”
One of the academics to put their name to the letter, University of Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies head Jake Lynch, told The AJN that “my information is that Jewish students were not discriminated against, but that the meeting was solely for people who had signed a particular political statement”.
But Lesh said there was no suggestion that it was a closed event or that students must have signed a petition to enter.
“Lynch and many of the other academics who signed the letter are just buying the story the Socialist Alternative have been spinning,” he said.
Dvir Abramovich of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission said the deregistration of Socialist Alternative actually “promotes and encourages the unfettered flow of expression and the exchange of ideas by sending a message that any group that harasses and intimidates students because of their political views or religion will not be countenanced”.
GARETH NARUNSKY
Socialist Alternative protestors taking part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in July. Photo: AAP Image/Newzulu/Mitchell Burke
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