Australia plans to defund universities that don’t stop their antisemitism. Should Canada?

On the first day of Hanukkah last year, the Australian government knew it had to act. Fifteen of its citizens lay dead on Bondi Beach. The country had just experienced its deadliest attack on Jews ever. For news consumers scrolling through stories, it was a horrific headline. But for Australia’s Jewish community, it was the devastating culmination of years of synagogue arson attacks, business vandalism, and neighbourhood threats. It also included hatred inside their nation’s post-secondary campuses, which many now viewed as breeding grounds for antisemitism. Allowing Jew hatred to grow in their places of learning was “one of the greatest failures of Australian universities in their history,” admitted emeritus professor Greg Craven, former vice-chancellor and president of the Australian Catholic University. He described the schools as morally complicit. The Left-leaning Labor government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launched a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which included a law enforcement review, alongside tougher hate and gun laws. But Albanese also pushed the accelerator on an education proposal: a report card system that would grade universities on whether they “facilitate, enable or fail to act against antisemitism.” The potential punishment for a failing grade? Revoked government funding and accreditation. The universities would be assessed by Craven. The move is “strongly endorsed” by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which called it “urgently needed.” But critics say it will have a chilling effect on academic freedom and student activism. This summer was supposed to be the deadline for the delivery of report cards of the top eight universities (also known as the “Group of Eight”). But the process has hit a major snag. None of the universities has been able to adopt a definition of antisemitism, delaying their submissions to the end of August, with the final report delivered in 2027. The fact that Australian universities are incapable of naming the disease that has infected them highlights a larger debate. Is an interventionist government approach what is needed to rein in taxpayer-funded progressive universities that have been left to run ideologically wild, or will it stifle free speech, doing little to actually stop antisemitism from festering? Furthermore, should this plan go international, with Canada—a country with its own university antisemitism crisis also governed by a centre-Left prime minister—adopting antisemitism report cards? Grading the graders While the full details of the antisemitism report cards have not been made public, and Craven tells The Hub he’s bound by confidentiality, some details have been leaked to the media. It appears universities will be assessed—given a grade of A to D—on how they have trained staff around antisemitism, how they’ve handled complaints and discipline, how they respond to discriminatory student behaviour in the form of speech and encampments, and whether they’ve provided a safe environment for Jewish students and staff. Within these areas, universities will be judged on how they handle “outdoor protests, encampments and display of flags, imagery, and promotional materials.” This includes policing access to university campuses. Some speculate oversight will be quite broad, with the report card even covering the behaviour of educators both on campus and online. Using new legislation, the government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency would then have the power to remove accreditation. This was music to the ears of many Australian Jews, who believe antisemitism has become entrenched in the education sector, leaving some to take their courses online or switch universities entirely. They point to repeated incidents reported by Jewish university students and staff, including being verbally abused at pro-Palestinian encampments, spat at, and doxxed online. They add that university administration has been slow or dismissive of their complaints. It is behaviour their own education minister called “horrific.” Following Oct. 7, a reported 64 percent of Jewish students across 32 Australian universities said they had experienced at least one incident of antisemitism at university. “The overall climate on the campuses…has been really quite toxic, and I think it’s been characterized in almost all cases, with the exception of maybe a couple, by a real lack of leadership on behalf of the universities in addressing the problem,” explains Simone Abel, head of legal at the ECAJ, to The Hub. “Which has left the Jewish students and staff feeling quite gaslit at every turn.” Supporters say having an independent investigator rather than advocacy groups hounding universities has lit a fire underneath the universities, forcing them to be more transparent. To them, it’s important that continued funding be a motivating factor. Up until now, they say, universities have not changed course in a major way. “I’m not sure, to be honest, that our universities actually believe that there are consequences. I say that because some of the behaviours I’ve seen fly in the face of how you would expect an institution to behave if it thought that there were consequences for its actions,” says Abel. “Despite the huge amount of media scrutiny and now scrutiny from the Royal Commission, the universities continue to do things that absolutely astound me on a daily basis. You have academics [or students] displaying swastikas, or doing salutes, or promoting antisemitic tropes in their lectures.” Beyond funding consequences, Australian universities, competing for elite and deep-pocketed international students, do fear the reputational damage a bad report card could bring. Not to mention the time and cost of documenting compliance. Not on board Still others, like Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight universities, consider the approach to be a blunt instrument to solve a complex problem. Critics believe it could stifle criticism and scholarship on Israel, while elevating antisemitism ahead of other forms of racism. They draw comparisons to President Trump, who cut billions in funding to multiple universities, insisting they openly tolerated antisemitism. Australian Greens deputy leader and higher education critic said the report card approach was part of a “long line of draconian, anti-protest crackdowns and is designed to have a chilling effect on academic freedom and student activism.” Report card supporters would say it’s rich that the progressive Left now seems to care about defending free speech. Naysayers believe Craven is biased on the issue, pointing to him previously calling the top universities “elitist” and “greedy” schools that have denounced “Western civilization, minimized antisemitism, and genuflected to Trotskyist student unions.” Here’s where the larger problem may lie. You cannot fix a campus culture through government policy alone. A report card cannot change the coursework an antisemitic professor assigns, nor can it teach the hate out of an undergraduate student who despises Jews. “Culture eats policy for breakfast,” admits ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim. Changing a culture through education will be bottom-up and take time. But given that Australian antisemitism gets worse each passing day, shouldn’t the state be using every policy tool at their disposal to blunt it? Coming to Canada?  In his recent speech about antisemitism, delivered at a Toronto synagogue, Prime Minister Carney named higher education as one of the hotbeds of hate, describing how antisemites “drove Jewish students from common spaces on our university campuses.” However, he has not tackled universities directly. His government’s new advisory council (meant to oversee all forms of rights, equality, and inclusion) mentions campuses in its sweeping list of four locations they plan to assess for antisemitism, alongside all public institutions, workplaces, and online spaces. The education problem was named in passing, but no direct solution was offered. Should Canadian universities, which have also registered a steep rise in antisemitic incidents, be subjected to antisemitic report cards of our own? The federal government has yet to respond to our questions. But surprisingly, even with the threat of revoked funding, the universities themselves may be open to the idea. “We are committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring Jewish students, faculty, and staff feel safe and supported on our campuses,” Gabriel Miller, president and CEO of Universities Canada, told The Hub. “We welcome the [Canadian] prime minister’s new initiative and look forward to contributing our expertise while learning from effective approaches in Canada and around the world.” Do Australian Jews think Canada should be grading its universities on antisemitism? Abel says there’s no harm in trying. “I think yes, on balance. But you might want to wait a year and see how we go.” Fault Lines examines the pressures pulling Canadian society apart and the principles that can hold it together. We look beyond headlines to understand how institutions, communities, and democratic norms are fraying. Our mission is to show how better choices can repair what is broken.  Editor’s note: A previous version of this story insinuated that Universities Canada was referring to the Australian prime minister’s new report card initiative, when they were in fact referring to Canadian prime minister’s new right’s council.