The Middleton Inquiry, commissioned by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), is a convenient whitewash of accusations of antisemitism made earlier this year. Despite this, the governing council of the university should now address the problem at its source by closing the Carumba Institute entirely.
Exactly as I predicted earlier this year, the Chancellor and her council entirely missed the point by asking former Federal Court Judge, John Middleton, to inquire only into the specific instances of alleged antisemitic speech uttered at the Carumba Institute’s conference on ‘anti-racism’ earlier that month.
As I said, the council are ‘like firefighters blinded by smoke, spraying water in all directions and unable to identify the source of the blaze’.
QUT has now released a report by Justice Middleton, which has exonerated the Indigenous poet, Lorna Munro, and also the allegedly ‘comic’ performance of Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz. Media coverage suggests Justice Middleton and the council believed there had been a few edgy moments at an otherwise perfectly normal university conference.
In January, I wrote to the Chancellor pointing out the university’s Carumba Institute had been hijacked by activists and was peddling an ideology based on problematic notions of anti-racism and ‘settler colonialism’, urging that it should be shut down.
Middleton in his report did recommend greater oversight of the Institute. This at least indicates a level of concern, however underwhelming. Yet he chose not to grapple with the fundamental criticism that would lead any reasonable observer to the conclusions the Institute has failed in the task it was given, that it is pursuing aims other than those appointed by the university, and it has no place at QUT.
As I said at the time:
QUT originally established the Carumba Institute to provide support for Indigenous researchers on campus, announcing with great fanfare its mission to ‘transform and lead Indigenous research, education and community engagement on a global scale’.
Whatever the mission, it has been hijacked. Queenslanders would be entitled to expect any conference hosted by such an institute would indeed focus on matters of education, social policy and community building relevant to Indigenous communities. Instead, it decided to put Israel and Judaism at the heart of its National Symposium on Unifying Anti-Racist Research and Action, inviting Palestinian activists and domestic opponents of Zionism.
And here is the point at which it is impossible to understand what is happening at the Carumba Institute unless you take a minute to examine the intellectual framework in which its leaders and key researchers operate. Examining their speeches, research papers, interviews and promotional materials, we see again and again the occurrence of the key buzzwords of the academic left: ‘antiracism’, ‘decolonisation’, ‘intersectionality’, and ‘structural racism’.
Antiracism is not a rigorously researched concept. It has also been totally discredited by the failure of Ibram X. Kendi’s Centre for Racism Research at Boston University, which has been shut down by the university’s administration.
Similar criticism could be made, and has been made, by the Institute of Public Affairs, that the theories of settler colonialism are thinly veiled opportunities to attack Israel and undermine the sovereignty of Australia.
According to newspaper reports the Carumba Institute has now been placed under the allegedly watchful eye of the Provost of QUT, Professor Robina Xavier. Any QUT alumni approached for donations to QUT should reply that no support will be provided until the Carumba Institute is closed down.
Scott Hargreaves is the Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs
