Racism@Uni study finds scale of racism at university campuses across Australia ‘pervasive’
Fellow students competing to shout “terrorism” the loudest at a Palestinian student, being told Indigenous people should be “rounded up and shot” by a placement supervisor, “jokes” about slanty eyes and people screaming “send them to the camps” at groups of Jewish students: these are the experiences of Australian university students over the past two years, according to a landmark study.
Racism@Uni – the first national study of its kind – concluded that racism is “pervasive” across the country’s 43 universities. Taking in the views of 47,000 students and 28,000 staff, the study was commissioned by the Federal government in 2024 and undertaken by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The situation on campus worsens with external events, the report said, with First Nations students and staff seeing more racism during the failed referendum on The Voice, Asian students experiencing a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, and antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Middle Eastern sentiment reaching new heights since the Israel-Hamas war began more than two years ago.
“Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim and Middle Eastern staff and students have endured significantly heightened hostility,” the report said.
“I’d encountered antisemitism before, but I had never been scared to be Jewish. In uni, I frequently feel the need to hide my religion,” one student said.
respondents experience indirect
racism.Peter Braig
“Many university staff are promulgating antisemitic attitudes and ideas in the classroom. I constantly hear tropes to do with money, power, control, blood thirstiness and other antisemitic ideas in classrooms, and staff meetings,” a staff member said.
Of Jewish students and staff, 89.1 per cent said they had experienced direct or indirect racism, as did 80.6pc of Middle Eastern respondents, 76.3pc of Muslim respondents and 90.2pc of Palestinian respondents.
Middle Eastern staff and students described a pattern of intimidation from campus security, including being followed, surveillance of their social media, and security asking for identification.
The findings were completed before the December massacre at Bondi Beach, in which 15 people were killed as they attended a Jewish festival.
“The Commission also recognises that such incidents of violence impacts on the broader community and are often accompanied by a heightened risk of racism and vilification… towards all communities that experience racism,” the report noted.
Seventy per cent of the study’s respondents had experienced direct or indirect racism, including three in four international students experiencing indirect racism, and one in five academics experiencing direct interpersonal racism.
The report’s sweeping recommendations included establishing a sector-wide framework and a government working group, annual independent reviews and development of specific anti-racism strategies.
“The insights and data from this study highlight that racism at university is not confined to isolated incidents or individual behaviour – it is systemic. Racism is pervasive across the sector, affecting many groups in serious ways,” said Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman.
More to come.
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