After everything, Macquarie is still teaching the same poison

After everything Australia has been through in recent years, after the hatred, intimidation, and cowardice, after the December 14 massacre and all the speeches that followed, after yet more promises of action and resolve, we are still here.

Still confronting the same poison.

Still hearing the same lies.

Still watching institutions say the right things while tolerating the very filth they claim to oppose.

This time, it is Macquarie University.

A formal complaint has been lodged with the Vice Chancellor regarding material delivered in a class called Middle-East Politics, after serious concerns were raised by a student about a lecture delivered on 12 March. The complaint concerns statements including “Israel’s future goal to invade and occupy southern Lebanon”, references to Hezbollah as a “resistance group”, and claims about Israel and the IDF carrying out “ethnic cleansing”. It also makes clear the student was initially too afraid to come forward publicly, though is willing to speak directly as the matter escalates.

That should alarm anyone who still believes universities are places of scholarship rather than political instruction.

And this is not just about a few offensive phrases.

We are in possession of the lecture recording, and it lays bare nearly two hours of offensive and false narrative, presented without context, without factual integrity and without balance. What should have been a rigorous examination of contested issues instead appears to be a sustained exercise in political framing, where inflammatory claims about Israel, terrorism and so-called resistance are delivered with the authority of the lectern and the language of fact, evidence, and international law.

That is not scholarship.

It is an indictment of an institution willing to lend its authority to this kind of poison.

What makes it worse is that this is happening in a class that should demand rigour, nuance, and genuine engagement with competing perspectives. Instead, what appears to have been delivered is a lecture in which the “Israeli agenda” is invoked, Hezbollah is laundered through the language of “resistance”, and allegations of “occupation”, “ethnic cleansing” and supposed breaches of “international law” are presented as though they are neutral facts rather than highly contested political claims.

Let us be clear.

Hezbollah is not some romantic “resistance group”. To describe it that way in an Australian university classroom is not sophistication. It is the sanitising of terrorism through euphemism.

And when a lecturer speaks of “Israel’s future goal to invade and occupy southern Lebanon”, invokes an “Israeli agenda”, and frames accusations like “ethnic cleansing” and “international law” as though the matter is settled, the issue is not whether students should hear views they dislike. The issue is whether they are being taught how to think, or being expected to absorb a pre-packaged ideological script delivered with the authority of a university lecturer.

There is a difference between teaching contested ideas and presenting propaganda as fact.

Too many universities now pretend not to know the difference.

For years, Jewish students have been told that what they experience on campus is merely discomfort, merely political disagreement, merely part of university life. They are told not to overstate things. They are told that hostility and one-sided framing are simply part of the marketplace of ideas. But when a student is too afraid to challenge what is being said in class, too afraid to be identified, and too afraid of the academic or social consequences of speaking up, this is no longer a culture of inquiry. It is a culture of intimidation. That is exactly the concern raised in the complaint now before Macquarie University.

That is also why the broader Jewish community should be careful not to place all its hope in process alone.

Yes, the Royal Commission matters. But it does not fix what is happening now.

That is the trap.

There is a real danger that people hear the words “Royal Commission” and imagine the problem is being handled. It is not. Not if Jewish students are still walking into classrooms and hearing the same garbage. Not if terrorist groups are still being sanitised in academic language. Not if lecturers still feel comfortable presenting anti-Israel narratives as settled law, settled fact, and settled morality. Not if students still fear the cost of objecting.

After everything that has happened in Australia, after the warnings, the trauma, the speeches, the statements of solidarity and the promises of action, we are still confronting the same rot.

So enough with the words.

Enough with the sympathetic statements.

Enough with the carefully managed concern.

Macquarie University now has a choice. It can treat this as just another complaint to be absorbed into the bureaucracy, or it can confront what this incident appears to say about standards, culture, and accountability inside its own classrooms. That means reviewing the lecture recording in full. It means examining the teaching materials. It means asking whether the line between teaching and activism has been crossed. It means protecting students who are afraid to come forward. And it means being honest about whether a university that claims to support inclusion is in fact tolerating an environment in which some students no longer believe they can safely dissent.

If Australia is serious about confronting antisemitism and restoring social cohesion, universities cannot keep pretending they are bystanders to the problem. Too often, they are where the problem is intellectualised, legitimised and passed off as sophistication.

After everything, this country has endured, that should shame every vice chancellor in Australia.

And if this is what still passes for scholarship in 2026, nobody should dare tell the Jewish community to simply wait for another report.

Because nothing changes if all we get are words.

Michael Gencher is the Executive Director of StandWithUs Australia