Australia’s Sydney University was accused of “serious academic bias” last week after it was reported lecturers were comparing conservative politicians to Nazis, and Australia’s policies on refugee migration to the Nazis’ treatment of mentally ill people in Germany during the Holocaust.
A lecturer told students the way homosexuals were treated in Nazi Germany was “something out of (Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi’s) handbook.”
One second-year student said he was prevented from presenting his class assignment on modern anti-Semitism, and was told by his tutor to avoid conflating anti-Semitism with the anti-Israel movement.
“I was halfway through my slides when the tutor told me to skip the rest of the presentation, saying ‘We don’t want people to get the wrong idea about you’,” the 22-year-old student said, adding, “It was clear I was not allowed to discuss this. It was quite dogmatic.”
He subsequently decided to drop the study subject, titled, “The Holocaust, History and Aftermath.”
The University of Sydney was involved in a similar incident suppressing pro-Israel speech in 2015, when approximately 13 anti-Israel administrators, professors and activists disrupted a lecture by British colonel Richard Kemp because he defended the Israeli Defense Forces. The protest ended in an outright physical confrontation between security and protesters, some of whom had to be dragged out of the lecture hall.
“It was clear I was not allowed to discuss this. It was quite dogmatic.”
Student at Australia’s Sydney University when presenting assignment on anti-Semitism
Professor Jake Lynch, a loud anti-Israel voice on campus, was involved in the violent protest. Lynch still holds his post as the University of Sydney’s Director of Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.
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