By Georgie Dobbs
On the 29th of April, UQ students set up what would become a five-week encampment for Palestine. This was one of many camps set up across Australian universities and around the world. The UQ Gaza encampment has taught us many valuable lessons about why it’s important that students fight for Palestine and where we need to go from here.
It may come as no surprise that UQ, much like QUT, is run for profit and the needs of Australian industry. However, UQ goes above and beyond in its complicity in the genocide of Palestine. The university has deals with multiple weapons companies, which are developing tech, spy-ware, and new machines of mass destruction. Boeing, one of the biggest producers of weapons in the world, has a research centre on campus. Boeing produces many of the weapons that are at this very moment being deployed by the Israeli military to decimate Gaza. Boeing boasts about this on their website, proudly celebrating ties that “go back more than 75 years — to the founding of Israel”. The UQ encampment has rallied against the centre, organising hundreds of students to protest against Boeing and weapons companies on campus and demanding that UQ disclose all military ties and divest from Israel.
The UQ administration has done the math and decided the deaths of Palestinians is an acceptable trade in the pursuit of profit. Naturally, this is the same administration that receives millions of dollars in funding from the US Pentagon. The UQ Vice Chancellor, Deborah Terry, receives a cushy salary of $1.2 million – more than double Albanese’s! Meanwhile, UQ Chancellor Peter Varghese made his name serving under the Howard Government; helping the Australian government commit war crimes in Iraq and sentencing refugees to indefinite detention.
UQ’s response to the encampment has been nothing short of damning. For a university whose key mission is to “create change”, they sure seem committed to the status quo of Australian militarism. Over the course of the encampment, they continuously told us to pack down, and threatened students involved in the campaign with academic penalties. In the university’s quest to silence pro-Palestine activists, they even violated their own policies of free speech; asserting that protestors can’t use the words “intifada” and “out out, Israel out”, popular slogans that have been used all across the world to call for an end to the invasion. Shamefully, the university also called the police on a peaceful demonstration and arrested two activists. We are constantly told that universities are institutions of education, enlightenment, and exploring new ideas to change the world. In reality, what we’ve seen is that the second students start enacting the ‘wrong’ ideas, the university is there to stamp it out.
What we have also learnt is that student activism is important. When every other part of society wants to convince students to keep their heads down, the camp has proven that students are capable of taking political stances and want to fight for the issues they care about. Across the course of the campaign, dozens of students camped out and hundreds took part in the rallies, occupations, and teach-ins.
The UQ encampment joins a long and proud tradition of students fighting against war and oppression. This movement echoes the same radical struggle seen against the Vietnam War, the South African apartheid, and the Iraq War. Students have always made up an important layer in any social movement and can act as beacons of inspiration. The same is true today. The mass movement for a free Palestine has been going for 8 months. Every week in cities across Australia, thousands of people march for Palestine, many of whom are students. Just when it seemed the movement was in decline, the student encampments revitalised the campaign once again and galvanized a new layer of people to get involved in Palestine activism.
The UQ Palestine campaign reached a boiling point when more than 1,500 students came out to vote in the student general meeting. Only three of these meetings have ever taken place at UQ before. The turnout was so overwhelming that three separate overflow rooms needed to be set up to get students inside. Even this was not enough room to seat everyone, and the line for registration continued to stretch right up until the vote was taken. The student general meeting vote was to decide on three questions:
- Should UQ sever ties with companies that supply weapons to the Israeli Defence Force?
- Should UQ shut down the Boeing Centre?
- Should UQ financially divest from Israel?
The room was electric! Even during the busiest, most important time of semester, students were showing up to vote, wearing keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags, and loudly cheering on the pro-Palestine speakers. The meeting voted overwhelmingly to divest from Israel and stand in solidarity with Palestine. The ‘Yes’ vote was met with thunderous applause and chants, and the students marched across the campus to the chancellery building to take their message to the university administration directly.
The encampment and student general meeting have served as important political spaces for more students to get involved in Palestine activism. Now that Semester One is over, UQ students are faced with an important challenge: what’s next for the campaign? If there is one final lesson to be learned, it is that change is hard won.
We cannot look to our university administrations to have a change of heart, it’s up to each of us to join the fight. That means more people attending the city rallies, making arguments to your friends, and getting involved with the Palestine activist group on your campus. The question is no different for QUT. Semester Two is the chance for us to show our solidarity with Palestine.
The QUT Student Guild will be holding our own Student General Meeting for Palestine on Thursday 15 August. If you want your voice heard, come and join us. Time and room to be announced.
Georgie is one of the Engineering Councillors in the QUT Guild and a socialist. It’s plain as day for anyone who can see that the world is run in the favour of a rich parasitic minority and works against the interests of ordinary workers and students. She has been involved in the fight against racism, climate change, militarism, and the fight for a free Palestine, and wants to encourage more students to join the fight too.
