Chancellor warns universities failed Jewish students after October 7
Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott revealed her childhood experience of “severe violence” and antisemitism in a speech to Australian Jewish Funders and the Dor Foundation on Monday, 1 December.
She used the address to warn that Australian universities failed Jewish students after October 7. According to The Australian, Westacott told the Melbourne gathering that she grew up under the shadow of a father whose hostility towards Jews shaped her adolescence and left a lasting mark.
Jennifer Westacott, Chancellor of Western Sydney University
“My father was many things, but most profoundly, an antisemite,” she said. She described a childhood marked by fear, dysfunction and violent episodes that created what she called a lingering sense of anxiety.
She recalled an image on television showing two prisoners in striped uniforms hanging in a street. “I must have been very distressed because my father said something to me like ‘Don’t worry, that only happens to the Jews.’”
“I have never been able to shake off the image of their faces,” she said. Westacott added that she had spent years questioning why she never challenged his views, explaining that as a child she felt frightened and unable to understand what she was seeing. She said that similar attitudes were still found “in some sections of our society”.
Westacott turned to the response on campuses after the Hamas attacks of October 7, accusing the wider higher education sector of a “failure of collective leadership”. “Universities are places where there is a contest of ideas, but they can never be places of fear and intimidation,” she said. She argued that many institutions “hid behind free speech” instead of acting when Jewish staff and students faced harassment.
She said antisemitic behaviour had been allowed to grow through what she called incremental acceptance. Her comments match concerns raised by Jewish organisations and reflect recent campus safety statements made by Western Sydney University.
Westacott also outlined her role on the board of the Dor Foundation, the organisation established by former treasurer Josh Frydenberg to reduce antisemitism and hate across Australia. The Foundation describes its mission as building a future free from antisemitism through a coordinated national programme. “Dor”, meaning “generation” in Hebrew, refers to the Foundation’s goal of passing on values of respect and tolerance.
The Dor Foundation has identified universities and online spaces as its first areas of focus, noting that they have been major flashpoints since 2023. Its board, known as the Board of Guardians, includes business, academic and community leaders, including Deputy Chair Elana Rubin AM. The Foundation’s CEO, Tahli Blicblau, previously worked in senior roles in the NSW public service.
Westacott told the audience that the sector had still not confronted why campuses had become centres of hostility. “I still don’t believe we fully comprehend why universities became the catalyst for hate and antisemitism,” she said. “Our task is to understand this, understand its origins, understand how widespread it is, understand what actions will turn it around.”
She said the Dor Foundation would work with universities, students and staff to build stronger responses to antisemitism and support people willing to challenge hate speech. “We will support a process of permanent and continuous reflection and action to eliminate antisemitism from university environments,” she said.
Antizionism will never truly be anti-semitism if all Zionists aren’t
addressed in the same breath, not just Jews.
It is refreshing to read Chancellor Jennifer Westacott’s account of the rise of antisemitism in universities in Australia (and around the world), and even more so her commitment to understand it and act against it. Just as affirming Indigenous Australian, Jewish history and culture needs affirming too. Any serious attempt to address the issue should include an honest reckoning with the past 100 years of the conflict and the many efforts made to resolve it.
While antisemitism is almost as old as the Jewish people themselves, its latest iteration is closely linked to the rise of postmodern and anti-colonial ideologies that increasingly challenge the foundations of Western civilisation. When these ideological movements intersect with the ambitions of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood—whose goal of spreading Islamic law is well-documented and often supported by funding from Qatar—the result is a toxic cocktail that fuels contemporary Jew-hatred.
Education is therefore paramount in confronting this wave. Universities should be leading the response, not contributing to the problem, as they too often are today.