Deakin became the latest university where students passed a pro-Palestine motion at a general meeting, on August 28.
About 1500 students debated and passed a motion, in May, calling on the University of Queensland (UQ) to divest from weapons companies.
Almost 1000 students voted at the University of Sydney (USyd) on August 7 in favour of two pro-Palestine motions.
Since then, similar motions have been passed by students at the University of Melbourne and the University of Adelaide.
Six hundred students defied harassment by the Queensland University of Technology management to vote up a motion on August 15 calling for divestment from weapons companies profiting from genocide.
USyd Education Officer Grace Street told Green Left she thinks it is “amazing” how far reaching the student solidarity movement for Palestine has become.
She said the SGMs this semester have been influenced by the student encampments set up across the country earlier in the year. “They highlighted that Palestine has the support of the broader community and especially the students.”
“We know, from history, that the students are generally on the right side of history and leading these fights for social justice.”
Long-time USyd staff have told Street that student solidarity with Palestine on campus reminds them of anti-war student activism during the Vietnam War and other iconic society-wide struggles.
In Street’s view, the return to forms of direct community action is significant after “decades of the neoliberal university”, characterised by “individualism and apoliticism”.
The student movement has taken aim at university links with weapons companies.
Student activist Sam Morris told GL that the Boeing Centre at UQ is a major target. Boeing produces Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), a type of guided bomb.
UQ has also disclosed two other partnerships with weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin and MBDA UK.
“Lockheed Martin is a big one,” Morris said, “because they’re the manufacturer of the F35 fighter, which Israel is using to bomb Gaza”.
UQ also has $12 million indirectly invested in Airbnb and Booking.com, both of which are listed on the United Nations Human Rights Council database of companies complicit in the occupation of the West Bank.
Morris said this makes UQ complicit in Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.
UQ has been forced to disclose that it receives $37.9 million from the US Department of Defense. It claims this is mostly for “health-related research,” but a lot of military expenditure can be disguised under such labels.
Student campaigners at USyd are targeting weapons company Thales, because students do “not want to have warmongering companies on campus”.
USyd management wants to “emphasise that the current research with Thales was just about robotic systems,” Street said.
“But, if you dig into that a bit further, these robotic systems could be used for anything, particularly unmanned military vehicles [and drones].”
A lot of students are unaware of the university’s ties to weapons corporations, she said, so a big part of the campaign is focused on exposing the connections.
“There is still that information gap,” Street said, and the semester one encampment was “very useful in locating that fight [in Palestine] here and showing the breadth of complicity, not just in government but through institutions [like the university]”.
The semester one encampments did manage to secure “disclosure” agreements from some universities, including USyd and UQ.
But management is attempting to look like they are transparent and give the impression they are “working towards ethics, but we know that’s a lie”, Street said.
Street said the “disclosure” agreement at USyd was a commitment to review investment policies about ties to military industries. Street said this is “definitely not a win”, but merely “paying lip service” so the university doesn’t “have to engage with our demands further”.
As proof of that, the university has appointed multiple pro-Zionist figures to its Investment Policies Review Working Group.
Morris said the disclosure agreement at UQ is “a mixed bag”: It was a “win for the university” because it released some of the pressure from the encampment, however, it also “showed us that the university was really feeling the heat”.
USyd released a statement on August 8 responding to the SGM of the day before.
The statement “unequivocally” condemned “violence, terrorism, and any violations of human rights”.
However, it made clear that the “violence” it condemned included expressions of “support for Hamas”. At the same time it was studiously silent about the genocide being committed by Israel, with Australian complicity.
UQ also tried to ban some forms of student expression, including some chants.
Street said that the Labor government faces a lot of shame for its complicity in genocide. She is aware that this is a “long-term campaign” but, based on experience from the anti-Apartheid campaign in South Africa including support from across the globe, when pressure builds regimes can “just topple”.
“We need to keep the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) at the centre,” Street said. We need to find ways to “keep momentum” and to “hit targets where it hurts”.
Everyone can contribute to boycotts and divestment, either individually or institutionally, she said. “Hopefully, one day we’ll get [government] sanctions [on Israel].”