An Australian university has been caught up in an escalating dispute over academic freedom, after clearing a lecturer over a tweet that had angered a Jewish lobby group.
The University of NSW has dismissed a complaint by Australian Jewish Association public affairs director Robert Gregory over a lecturer’s pro-Palestinian message on Twitter.
Assistant professor Lana Tatour, a lecturer in development at the UNSW school of social sciences, told The Australian she had been “threatened” after the AJA lodged its complaint and demanded a retraction and apology.
The dispute centred on Dr Tatour’s tweet that “Palestinians have the right to resist Israeli occupation, colonisation and apartheid”.
“Stop scrutinising Palestinians and focus on Israel’s crimes,’’ the tweet continued.
“There is no symmetry between occupier and occupied, coloniser and colonised.”
The lecturer posted the comment on Twitter on June 21 – the same day Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis and wounded four others at a roadside restaurant near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
The militant Hamas group claimed the shooting was a response to a raid by Israeli forces the previous day that had killed six Palestinians in the city of Jenin.
Dr Tatour’s tweet, which did not link to news or commentary about either shooting, generated 590 retweets and 1534 likes.
Read the article by Natasha Bita in The Australian.