Nazi salutes in the lecture hall: what a Sydney academic told Australia’s antisemitism commission

A University of New South Wales academic told Australia’s royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion on Monday 13 July 2026 that students in his class performed Nazi salutes in front of him, in testimony that puts the lived experience of Jewish staff inside Australian lecture halls on the public record for the first time this inquiry.

The commission, sitting in Sydney, has spent the past week collecting accounts from Jewish students, academics and community leaders about hostility they say has become routine on campus since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in late 2023. The UNSW testimony, first reported by Guardian Australia’s live blog at 08:47 UTC, lands at a moment when the Albanese government is under pressure to translate the commission’s eventual findings into enforceable standards for the higher-education sector.

What the academic described

The witness told the commission that the salute incidents took place in a teaching setting, with other students present, and that he reported them through university channels. He is one of several Jewish academics and students to give evidence this round. The commission has not, in the public session, named the lecturer or the specific course, citing privacy obligations. According to the Guardian’s live coverage, the academic described a pattern of small-group intimidation that escalated over a semester: salutes first, then slurs, then what he called "a sense that the room had been given permission to be hostile."

Universities Australia, the peak body for the sector, has previously acknowledged that Jewish staff and students have faced harassment on campus. The commission’s task is to test whether existing university complaints mechanisms, federal anti-discrimination law, and the new National Student Safety Framework are adequate, or whether the sector needs a binding code.

The students behind the testimony

Alongside the academic, the commission heard from Jewish students at UNSW and the University of Sydney who described being singled out for their faith, having mezuzot torn from dormitory doors, and being told to "go back to Poland" during classroom debate. One student said she stopped wearing a Star of David necklace after a stranger photographed it on a Sydney train and posted the image to a group chat.

These accounts sit alongside earlier evidence this year from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which has tracked a sustained post-October-2023 rise in reported incidents. The council’s data is the standard reference the commission is using, and it will be tested against university-held incident logs during cross-examination in later sittings.

The structural picture

Australian universities are now the second front of a debate that until recently ran almost entirely through social media and street protests. The mechanics are familiar from comparable inquiries in the United Kingdom and Canada: an overseas conflict radicalises a small minority of students, social platforms amplify the most extreme clips, and university administrations, bound by both free-speech obligations and anti-discrimination law, move too slowly to satisfy either side.

What is distinctive in the Australian version is the speed with which the federal government has moved. The royal commission was announced in early 2026 with a wide mandate: antisemitism, social cohesion, and the operational capacity of universities and schools to handle religiously and racially motivated harassment. The commission has the power to compel documents and testimony, and its recommendations, if accepted, would flow into a binding code administered by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

What is being argued, and what is not

The commission is not, on the public record, examining the conduct of the war in Gaza or the actions of the Israeli government. Counsel assisting has kept the hearings focused on the Australian experience: what happened, where, to whom, and what the institutional response was. That scope is deliberate, and it has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. Palestinian-Australian community groups have argued that the framing of the inquiry itself elevates one form of racism; some Jewish-Australian groups have argued that the focus on universities dilutes attention from online abuse and street violence.

A plausible counter-read holds that antisemitism on campus is real but statistically marginal, and that the commission risks producing a code of conduct that chills legitimate protest. Another holds that the testimonies are representative of a broader climate and that the cost of inaction is the gradual exclusion of Jewish students from public higher education. The evidence the commission gathers over the coming weeks will determine which framing carries the day, and whether TEQSA ends up with new enforcement teeth or a softer set of guidance notes.

What remains genuinely uncertain is the prevalence question. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s incident data is the most cited, but it is self-reported community data. University-held logs, which the commission can compel, may tell a different story. Until those numbers are on the table, the gap between "a handful of bad actors" and "a structural problem" will continue to be filled by anecdote on all sides.

The commission’s next public sitting is scheduled for later this month. The academic from UNSW is expected to return for cross-examination on his institution’s complaints handling. Universities Australia will be asked to account for variation in incident rates between campuses, and the federal Education Minister’s office is likely to be called to explain the enforcement gap between the National Student Safety Framework and existing anti-discrimination law. Each of those steps will narrow, or widen, the space Jewish students and academics have to do their work in 2026.

This article was compiled from wire coverage of the royal commission’s public hearings. Monexus framed the story around the academic testimony and the structural question of campus enforcement, rather than the underlying geopolitical dispute that gave rise to it.