Vice chancellor of Sydney University Mark Scott has apologised about his light-touch approach to a two-month pro-Palestinian campus encampment at the antisemitism royal commission.
In a sometimes feisty encounter in Melbourne on Wednesday, Scott also had to fend off criticisms that his campus was not a safe space for Jewish staff and students.
Commissioner Virginia Bell twice stepped in to stop questions being asked of him by the lawyer for seven Jewish communal organisations.
The controversy centres on the occupation of Sydney University’s campus in May and June 2024 – Australia’s longest occupation – and whether Jewish staff and students were safe on his campus.
Scott told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion he was preoccupied at the time with shutting down the encampment as quickly and peacefully as possible, believing acting too forcefully would have inflamed it.
Scott said there had been no history of encampments at Sydney University, and no expectation Australian campuses would follow the United States and Britain down that route, so the university had made very little preparation for it.
Soon, though, there were hundreds of protesters and 139 tents. As the numbers built, he said, they watched with concern the “destruction and turmoil” that was happening on US university campuses.
“Universities like Columbia, like UCLA, saw many hundreds of students arrested, outbreaks of violence … more outsiders coming to join those university protests, the arrival, as I recall, of neo-Nazi groups and an escalation of violence, destruction of property.”
His university’s focus became to de-escalate, he said, saying that to have had the students taken away by force might mean “an encampment 10 times the size the day after”.
Asked about whether the university had tried to ban chants such as “from the river to the sea,” and “globalise the intifada”, he said they had not.
“They were not banned by the laws of NSW, they were not banned by the national laws. Those who said to us, ‘Well, you should not be able to say that phrase within the university gate’, acknowledged that you could walk outside the university gate and say it without any sense of sanction. That seemed a disconnect that was hard for us to deal with.”
After the encampment finished, Scott said he had become more informed about antisemitism and developed a different perspective.
“I think I understand better just how menacing and threatening some in our community found the presence of the encampment every day,” he told Bell.
He said he still believed the pursuit of a peaceable resolution to the protest had been “very important and to the long-term benefit of the university.
“But I can see that our Jewish students and staff paid the price for that as the encampment dragged on and I am sorry to them that it took that long for us to get it done, and I’m sorry we did not keep them more closely engaged and listen more intently to them as it was going.”
He agreed that some outsiders were likely involved in the protests, but would not confirm that members of extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir (which has since been proscribed) were among them.
The university now has rules in place – protesters are prohibited from camping or protesting inside buildings – and there are stricter rules on what graffiti is allowed in the university’s infamous “graffiti tunnel” and which flags can be waved at protests.
In a testy exchange, the lawyer for seven Jewish communal organisations, Gabi Crafti, accused Scott of failing to keep Jewish children safe.
Bell had already ruled out one question from Crafti about whether Scott could guarantee that activists would never again say on his campus that Israel should not be able to exist.
“I think that’s a difficult proposition to put to your witness,” Bell told Crafti. “We’re talking about a university! A whole range of views might, in many contexts, be expressed. I’m not going to allow that question.”
Crafti later alleged there were “very few campuses or universities in Australia that Jewish students and Jewish staff feel more unsafe than the University of Sydney,” and said the university was “probably one of the worst places to be a Jewish student”.
“Jewish students and Jewish staff at the University of Sydney were not safe in 2024 or 2025, and quite possibly today, do you accept that proposition?” Crafti asked Scott, then clarified she was talking about psychosocial safety.
When Scott argued that people had wanted him to close down the encampment, Crafti said: “What they wanted you to do, Professor Scott, was to keep them safe and you didn’t do it.
“There is no reason for any parent of a Jewish child to think that their child is going to be safe …” Crafti began, before Bell cut across her.
“Ms Crafti, I’m not going to allow that if it ends up as a question. The witness is not required to answer a proposition.”
Reacting to Scott’s evidence, the Zionist Federation of Australia’s Jeremy Leibler said when Scott was told Hizb ut-Tahrir was on his campus “he did nothing”.
“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,” Leibler alleged.
He accused Scott of a “failure of leadership”.
The University of NSW vice chancellor Attila Brungs, who also gave evidence, said there had been no encampments on his campus. The university’s rules say potential protesters must notify UNSW security at least 48 hours in advance of any demonstration.
People from outside campus were not allowed to attend without permission, they could only be in open public spaces, and they must be “orderly, peaceful, and do not make other campus users feel harassed or intimidated”.
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