Harassment, vilification, vandalism, and violence events associated with the 2024 UQ encampments

On April 29, 2024 an Anti-Israel (students4palestine_uq) encampment was setup at the great court of the University of Queensland (UQ) St Lucia campus. While as a whole, the students4palestine_uq group did not call for violence, there have been plenty of events of harassment, vilification, vandalism, and even violence of campus. These events began after that encampment was established. In particular, hate speech against Israelis is prevalent in the narrative of that group, and such speech opens the door for extreme events. Extremists and mentally unsound people, while not directly driving the students4palestine_uq camp, may have been motivated by that group and have carried out more extreme events on campus.

On April 29, 2024, a few hours after the anti-Israel encampment was setup, in an attempt to convince UQ to protect the campus and ban encampments from the go, Camp Shalom was also setup at the opposite end of the great court. A secondary goal of Camp Shalom was to present Jewish students with a safe space for the duration of the unrest. Camp Shalom remained on campus for 3 weeks, until the point at which the UQ vice-chancellor finally asked encampments to leave via an e-mail communication to the whole university body. That request was sent to the university body (students and staff) on May 17, and a day later, on May 18, Camp Shalom was disbanded. Note that the Anti-Israel encampment did not respond to UQ's call to disband, and did not disband in parallel to Camp Shalom.

With the exception of referencing antisemitism in communications on May 17 and June 1, and lightly referencing of a few adverse events in other communications, the university has maintained a position claiming that "most of the protest activity has been very civil" (variations of this narrative have been continuously provided by vice-chancellor (VC) Professor Deborah Terry AC). These claims of the university via the VC have appeared throughout May 2024 both in personal communication with Camp Shalom members, in media communications, in all staff/student communications, and in the all-staff forum of May 27. However, these claims, attempting to present "activism on campus" in a positive light, stand in stark contrast to many severe events that have happened on campus since April 29, 2024.

While Camp Shalom members have let the university know about many adverse events, often with detailed information and suggestions on action, the university seems to have handled only a small subset of these events. In particular, disciplinary action and/or detailed investigation has hardly taken place for the majority of the events, and even in cases where events were directly reported to the university, the approach has been very hands-off.

On June 1 the university released a Statement of Commitment between The University of Queensland, UQ Muslim Students for Palestine and The University of Queensland Union (UQU) after which members of the anti-Israel camp dismantled part of the camp and stopped sleeping on campus. Note however that the agreement does not require parties to not camp again.

The negotiations were not with both Camp Shalom and the Anti-Israel parties, but only involved the anti-Israel parties. Note that the vice-chancellor met Jewish student leaders on Friday, May 31, but they were not presented the details of the forthcoming agreement. An item of particular interest in that statement/agreement is 3b: Develop and publish an Anti-racism Commitment, to operate alongside the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Behaviours Policy and our codes of conduct for staff and students. This will be supported by a speaker series to build an understanding of different perspectives and lived experiences. The series will be led and coordinated by UQ’s Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences but co-created with students.

The wording of that item and the fact it does not explicitly discuss hate speech against zionists and antisemitism was flagged as immediate concern to Camp Shalom members (private communication between Camp Shalom and the vice-chancellor on evening of June 1). As UQ has not indicated an update to that item, and since Camp Shalom members are not aware of investigation of the events described below, on June 2 Camp Shalom members have publicly stated the camp will be up in protest under the "keep me safe" banner, during the graduation days of July 8 - 12.

List of events (last updated June 3):

Here is a list of recorded events and the university response. The order is not chronological and is based on aggregation of events, with some references.

It is important to note that there have been no recorded events against the students4palestine_uq camp.

List of media articles/interviews (last updated May 24):

Here is a list dealing with UQ. The list is still being updated.