racism

Palestine teachers

A diasporic ethical response to Segal’s Plan to combat antisemitism in education

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As an anti-Zionist Jew and social-justice educator, I want to address two claims that I find offensive in Jillian Segal’s Plan as Australian Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.

One claim is that generations younger than 35 years are vulnerable to antisemitic propaganda, as too immature to grasp antisemitic history that justifies Israeli state existence. That Segal avoids saying ‘existence on Palestinian lands’ conflates antisemitism with critique of Israel’s ethnocentric occupation of those lands.

Another claim is that Segal, and those she recruits, are positioned to design curricula that guide young minds, including those Jewish, away from ‘antisemitism’.

Do Jews under 35 lack capacity to draw lessons from family histories of Holocaust cruelties, or from Tsarist pogroms that my grandparents fled as refugees? Are we simply wrong to see parallels with Israeli affliction of ongoing Nakba upon Palestinians, based on a biblical ‘right’ to establish solely-Jewish sovereignty from river to sea?

Is it antisemitic to see compelling reasons for my Jewish identity to make ethically-diasporic ‘exodus from Zionism’ (quoting Jewish scholar-activist Naomi Klein)?

My youthful biographic learning

When I was a 19-year-old undergrad at Cornell University, the Gulf of Tonkin incident incited U.S. government to replace France’s fading imperialism in Vietnam with ‘anti-Communist’ war upon Vietnamese lives and lands. I began learning capitalist-imperial histories behind such warfare at campus teach-ins and soap-box speeches on the Arts Quad. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society anti-war movement, where I learned from (hi)stories shared by professorial allies. For example, Pakistani Professor Eqbal Ahmad, friend of Palestinian social-justice icon Edward Said, told how, as a Muslim boy in a northern region of what would become India, he watched in shock as his father was murdered by Hindus seizing Muslim lands (see Ahmad, and Said’s foreword, in Confronting Empire). This precipitated meaningful educative dialogue about ethnocentric cruelties towards ‘others’.

At age 19, was I too unripe to learn from ethnically diverse scholar-activists? Such learning continues across my life, from Palestinians and other Muslims, ‘Australian’ First Nation peoples, and more. Dialogically, I learn their life (hi)stories in relation to mine. Does such learning ‘misguide’ my Jewish identity exodus from Zionism? Is Segal’s education plan morally superior to those who illustrate and explain, rather than ignore, capitalist-colonial disregard for people exploited and killed in ethno-nationalist pursuit of empire?

Educative urgencies in dark-age times

In darkening times now and ahead, I take educative insight from Antonio Gramsci, a Marxian activist, elected to Italy’s Parliament. Gramsci analysed 1920s/30s fascist rise in Europe, leading to WW2, in his prison notebooks (after arrest by Mussolini’s police). Gramsci wrote: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’.

I argue that a key ‘old’, now dying, is structural capacity, among those in governance power, to sustain decent life standards, and so stem social unrest, in ‘advanced-capitalist’ nations that comprise 20 per cent of global population.

Such had been made possible by colonial-imperial exploitation of labours and resources from the peripheralised 80 per cent. But this reached a limit-point decades ago, as Wallerstein explains. And yet, a horribly morbid symptom is fevered warfare as nations with military might seek regional hegemony. They do so not only to appropriate resources but to forge ethno-nationalist ‘loyalty’ among ‘proper citizens’. Israel is a prime example.

Along with climate catastrophes, desperate refugee masses, cost-of-living hikes and more, a key morbid symptom is a trend towards fascist governance in so-called ‘western democracies’ that remain wedded to capitalism. Unable to redress structurally complex life struggles among rising population numbers, far-right power-forces conjure simplistic populist ‘explanation’ of ‘good citizen’ struggles. They target ‘bad citizens’ (non-whites; women who don’t marry men, etc.) within nations, refugees seeking entry, ‘lunatic left’ judges, politicians, academics and more, as ‘vermin’ who ‘poison the blood of our country’ (Trump’s words, echoing Hitler, as Hallee Conley situates it). In turn, they ‘justify’ harshly punitive military arrests, prison camps, deportations, etc., to ‘make our nation great again’. Capitalist-colonial death throes thus intersect with racialized, sexualized and other structural inequalities at crisis pitch.

In education, far-right nationalising of morals and mentalities – which Segal’s Plan morbidly symptomizes – entails curricular negation, in schools and universities, of ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ (DEI) attention to ongoing structurally unjust inequalities.

Diasporic ethical fuel for pursuing social-educational justice

Social-justice educators must challenge selective curriculum that negates richly diverse ‘funds of knowledge’ which develop in marginalised lifeworlds. This includes ‘dark funds’ that build as useful knowledges for facing difficult lifeworld struggles. We must counter curricular narrowness, inherent in Segal’s Plan, that promotes ethnocentric assimilation of cultural diversities unequally within moral ‘cohesion-building’.

Curricular activity must instead raise consciousness to how difficult symptoms in young people’s lifeworlds link to structural crises, and in turn develop capacities to rework life contexts towards socially-just futures. This requires educator practice of a diasporic ethics that shares and creates needed knowledges and proactive capacities. It means working together with those whom we teach and from whom we must learn, inclusively building solidarities across ethnic-cultural diversities.

I advocate curricular and pedagogic practice of what Moll calls ‘relational agency’, in which students, community people and educators collectively learn-and-teach together. Doing so, they build capacities to understand and redress what I call lifeworld problems that matter.

To briefly outline this educational approach: In small affinity groups, students spend time outside of school, action-researching mattering problems they identify in their lifeworlds. In classrooms, the groups dialogue around how these varied problems share resonant links to economic, climatic, racialized, gendered and other interwoven structural crises. In both classroom dialogues and lifeworld action-research, educators and community people join students in building proactive capacities to pursue socially-just futures. Over time, visiting (hi)story sharers – such as Palestinian refugees – help to connect locally-lived struggles to globally-wider morbid symptoms of structural crisis.

Such inclusively learning across diversities starkly contrasts with what Freire describes as ‘banking pedagogy’ that deposits ethnocentric norms into students’ brains. That’s the pedagogy featured in Segal’s Plan.

A biographic coda

Against Segal’s plan to assimilate ethnic-cultural diversities into ethno-nationalist norms, I highlight my life of inclusive knowledge-sharing across diversities. My diasporic Jewish identity evolves in rich, if painful, learning from-and-with Palestinians and others who share (hi)stories of forced exodus from lands where they lived. I deeply feel the injustice that, having been born to a Jewish mother, I can choose to ‘settle’ on lands where I have not lived, while Palestinian refugees are denied right of return. 

In ethical counter, I declare myself a Palestinian-Jew. I here take inspiration from the diasporic hybridity voiced by Edward Said in an interview  with Israeli anti-occupation journalist Ari Shavit. Says Said:

[P]art of my critique of Zionism is that it attaches too much importance to home[land] … I want a rich fabric of some sort, which … no one can fully own. I never understood the idea of this is my place, and you are out…. Even if I were a Jew, I’d fight against it.

Responding to Said’s ‘Even if’, Shavit says: ‘You sound very Jewish’. Said replies: ‘Of course…. Let me put it this way: I’m a Jewish-Palestinian’. As an advocate for educative building of life together with diverse others in ethical solidarity, let me repeat aloud: I’m a Palestinian-Jew!!!

Lew Zipin holds adjunct positions at University of South Australia in the Education Futures unit, and at Victoria University in the Moondani Balluk Indigenous unit (as a non-Indigenous ally). His research, including in projects funded by the Australian Research Council, contributes to the Funds of Knowledge curricular approach for meaningful school engagement with rich knowledges that students inherit and develop in diversely marginalised communities. Lew is a member of Educational Researchers for Palestine.

Student encampment at Adelaide University - Kaurna Yerta 5 May 2024. Photo: Jack Desbiolles

Why Segal’s plan to combat antisemitism in education is dangerous and should be rejected

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In her plan to battle antisemitism, Jillian Segal, the federal government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, has delivered  a recipe for racial discord in schools and universities. It will stifle free speech and undermine superior attempts to combat racism. Segal will have the right to define the offences of antisemitism, the offenders and the punishments and will also shape the re-education of the various parties.

Responses

Prominent progressive Jews and Jewish groups, academics,  cultural and political commentators and human rights, Muslim, Palestinian, Indigenous groups highlight the plan’s considerable deficiencies.

 These commentators have identified the plan’s partisan definitions and arguments, untrustworthy evidence base and unreasonable and unwarranted policy recommendations. Segal’s claims are seen as excessive, and her proposals as repressive— potentially threatening democracy. If implemented, they believe her plan will undermine free speech, academic freedom and the right to protest.  

The Minister for Education, Jason Clare will not be bullied into ‘immediate action’. He is waiting for the report from the Islamophobia envoy (August) and the Australian Human Rights Commission’s review into racism in universities (November).  

Bad education, bad youth and a redemptive definition

Teachers, schools, universities and young people are in Segal’s sights. Her focus on education, Segal says, stems from the generational differences between the over and under 35s as to their ‘media consumption’, ‘perceptions of the Middle East and the Jewish community’ and the ‘Holocaust and its impacts on society’.   

To Segal, the under 35s are uninformed and misguided. They must be re-educated. Their universities and schools cannot be trusted to do this job because within them, antisemitism is ‘ingrained and normalised’.  So, despite her lack of educational expertise, Segal must step into the breach.

She will start by insisting that all educational institutions and systems adopt a particular definition of antisemitism. In its examples, this definition conflates anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiments with antisemitism. It has been persuasively discredited because of this dangerous conflation and because of its weaponisation.

But Segal wants to stick with it anyway. Afterall, it allows her to see examples of antisemitism whenever, wherever and however critical views about Israel and Zionism are expressed. It thus stretches her influence, multiplies her opportunities for denouncement and helps deflect wider attention away from Israel’s ever-more appalling treatment of the Palestinian people.

Rescuing universities?

This overzealous envoy expects universities to bow to as suspect definition She wants to

·      develop and launch a university report card, assessing each university’s implementation of effective practices and standards to combat antisemitism, including complaints systems and best practice policies, as well as consideration of whether the campus/online environment is conducive to Jewish students and staff participating actively and equally in university life.

·      work with government to enable government funding to be withheld, where possible, from universities, programs or individuals within universities that facilitate, enable or
fail to act against antisemitism. …

We argue there are  shades of authoritarianism here. Segal wants surveillance over university courses, teachers and researchers. She wants to repress speech and protest. She wants to intensify the current persecution of pro-Palestinian staff and students— those already silenced by many universities.  In short, she seeks to purge the university of voices and activities that she regards as illegitimate.

We think Segal also exhibits  moral blindness.  and fails to acknowledge that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, currently and over time, provides a fertile context for anti-Israel sentiments.

In our view, her compassion appears to be reserved exclusively for those experiencing antisemitism— as defined above.  We have seen no ovidence that she shows pity for the fear and pain of others — certainly not for the anguish of the people in Gaza experiencing genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation. Is she blind to this increasingly recognised ‘moral emergency of our time’?

Saving schools?

The envoy’s proposed Key Actions for schools include working with appropriate authorities to

  • embed Holocaust and antisemitism education, with appropriate lesson plans, in national and state school curricula
  • provide guidance to government on antisemitism education for educators and public officials 
  • provide recommendations to government on enhancing education about Jewish history, identity, culture and antisemitism in high school curricula ..

Segal has no expertise in curriculum and pedagogy or in the philosophies and practices of anti-racist education. Those with such expertise are unlikely to welcome her ‘lesson plans’, ‘guidance’ and curriculum ‘enhancement’. They are more likely to see her approach as counter to the best available programmes and practices and as unaware of the composition of current classrooms.  

Many classrooms include students from all sorts of cultures, religions and circumstances — some very difficult.  Under Segal’s racially hierarchical regime these students would be entitled to ask, ‘What about my family’s and community’s struggles with racism? What about our ‘history, identity, culture’?  What about other experiences of genocide?’  

Alternative and superior approaches are available and necessary—including critical racial literacy alongside anti-racist, decolonial methods. These recognise that racism may be experienced differently by different groups. But they do not prioritise one racially subjugated group over another or pit racially subjugated groups against each other. Rather they adopt ‘systemic, intersectional, strengths-based, and coordinated action’ as the National Anti-Racism Framework explains.

Jane Kenway is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in educational sociology.  

Main image: Student encampment at Adelaide University – Kaurna Yerta 5 May 2024. Photo: Jack Desbiolles. There is no evidence to say that any of these patterns of censorship occurred during this encampment.

phrases from student feedback

What happens when student feedback is racist

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Each semester, university staff receive anonymous student evaluations. These surveys are framed as neutral tools to support teaching staff’s ongoing reflection and improvement. On paper, they’re positioned to provide structured and constructive feedback to teaching staff, in a space that is intended to be safe for students (from academic recourse).

But what about the safety of the educators receiving them?  

As two Aboriginal women teaching in Critical Indigenous Studies, we know this question too well. The system of anonymous feedback, as it currently stands, can be a site of unfiltered racialised, gendered and deeply personal violence. Yet, because it arrives wrapped in bureaucratic language like “reflection” and “improvement”, it’s too often dismissed as just “part of the job”. But at what cost does this violent ‘part of the job’ come?  

Research into the abuse in anonymous feedback surveys has been well documented, with attacks on appearance, particularly amplified for women. These are often received through an impersonal, centralised email, and are often read in isolation.   

As Aboriginal women, we know too well the impact of these student surveys. Semester after semester we must brace ourselves for the things we know that will come. Yet it doesn’t matter how much we brace for it, it is always worse than we can imagine.  

But the truth is, nothing prepares you for seeing anonymous comments regarding Indigenous peoples, our knowledges, and histories, dragged through a system that was never built for or by us. And the comments post-Referendum? They’re louder, more entitled, more emboldened than ever.  

Real comments from anonymous student feedback

These are real comments pulled from anonymous student feedback. We’re told this is about improving teaching practice. As Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson asks “where is the duty of care for us?” as Educators and as people?  

Collation of just some extracts of anonymous student feedback from Session 1 2025  

Student Feedback or a Strategy of the System? 

The intersection of racism, misogyny, and anti-Indigenous sentiment is heightened in these cohorts, particularly when students feel resentment for having to learning Critical Indigenous Studies.  

This is even further amplified when the rise of anti-intellectualism is coupled with right wing media which encourages this disdain and devaluation ofIndigenous peoples, knowledges and perspectives.  

 

This is particularly true when students encounter the idea of unpacking their own proximity to settler colonial systems. For some, it is more comfortable to deflect. They do this by attacking the Indigenous tutors teaching the course, and the discipline itself,  instead of sitting with the discomfort of learning.  

“I don’t like that it was taught by Indigenous people”, “Not properly qualified”, “Her distasteful demeanor” are violent racist, gendered and anti-intellectual critiques of the teacher not the teaching.  This is settler fragility manifesting through institutional structures.  and they remind us how deeply whiteness is protected, even in the name of education. 

Still, We Teach 

But there is a flipside of this unfiltered violence.  There are pockets of so much joy in receiving feedback about the transformative learning experiences students have had. Perhaps hearing you were their favourite teacher. Or your class challenged them in a good way. Or the constructive and clever feedback, or things you may not expect (for example, students do want in person lectures again!).   

But woven through the vitriol are also the words that remind us why we continue to show up.  

Words and comments like these: 

“I found myself constantly thinking of what I had learnt and how I wanted to change myself and the others around me for the better.” 

“At times a confronting unit but I feel that it has changed my world view.”

“This unit should be mandatory for every student, I loved it.” 

We remember those students. The ones who sat in their discomfort, who leaned in rather than recoiled. The ones who stayed back after a class to yarn. The ones who later tell us they switched majors, or took our reading list to their family, had hard conversations, or considered the value and complexity of different worldviews.  

Those comments are few, but they carry a different kind of weight – one that is relational, and moves across time and space. They remind us that teaching isn’t transactional – it is transformative. And transformative teaching and learning does not just impact the world today, but the futures of tomorrow for all people.  

The System Isn’t Broken — It’s Working Perfectly As Designed 

As Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson tells us: “It is time for change, real change”.  

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed; to reinforce whiteness, to privilege student comfort over educator safety, and to silence those of us pushing back against settler colonial norms. 

But we’re still here. Still teaching. Still resisting. 

We’ve seen the strength of Indigenous students who, for the first time, see themselves reflected in the curriculum — not as deficits, not as histories, but as sovereign peoples. 

We’ve watched non-Indigenous students confront their own relations to settler colonial systems. We’ve felt transformational shifts. But this requires tertiary systems that support rather than harm the people doing this work.  

Speaking truth to power: where is our safety? 

We want duty of care extended to all of us.  Not just to students, but also to the Indigenous people, particularly women and gender diverse peoples. We have defied layers of oppression to be standing at the front of the room. 

The student feedback system may never love us. But our communities do. Our students, the ones who are genuinely open to learning, do. And we remain committed to showing up, to voicing our truths, and to teaching with our whole selves. 

Because our presence in these institutions isn’t just resistance. It’s sovereignty. 

Tamika Worrell is from Gamilaroi Country, and has been nurtured by Dharug Ngurra (Country), in Western Sydney. She is a senior lecturer in Critical Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, researching Indigenous representation in education and Indigenous digital lives, including AI.  

Ash Moorehead a Biripi Worimi woman, now living with/on Dunghutti Country. She is an associate lecturer in the Department of Critical Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University and PhD candidate. Her research explores Indigenous sovereignty at the intersection of Indigenous education and research