University Head Denies Pro-Palestine Student Performed Alleged Nazi Salute

The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, on April 1, 2022. Rebecca Zhu/The Epoch Times

The vice chancellor of one of Australia’s top universities has denied an incident in which a pro-Palestinian student allegedly performed the Nazi salute last year.

The incident took place during an online meeting of the Australian National University’s (ANU) student union in May 2024, at the height of pro-Palestinian protests across universities in Australia and other Western countries.

According to videos shared on social media, as the meeting progressed, one of the students suddenly made a hand gesture resembling the Nazi salute.

The content of the meeting sparked criticisms and prompted the ANU to conduct an investigation.

During a recent parliamentary inquiry on anti-Semitism at Australian universities, ANU leadership was questioned about the result of the investigation.

In response, ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell said the university found that there had not been a Nazi salute nor a Hitler massage at the student union meeting.

“There were a number of other pieces of that story that were not immediately clear … we do thoroughly investigate these issues and take them seriously,” she told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

“[It was] found that there was not, in fact, an incident.”

Labor MP Josh Burns, who is the committee chair, inquired about how ANU came up with that conclusion, given that the incident had been widely reported in the media.

Bell said while the university did not discuss individual cases, it had a robust investigation process.

“We have a fulsome process that we work through here, which involves … collecting multiple other pieces of evidence, multiple other pieces of vision that weren’t made as part of those news accounts, pieces of interviews with people that were around them,” she said.

Echoing the sentiment, ANU Deputy Vice-Chancellor Grady Venville said on a “superficial level,” the content of the student’s union online meeting appeared to be a terrible anti-Semitic incident and was completely unacceptable.

Nonetheless, she stated that the university had reached a conclusion based on the information obtained from the investigation, which was “much more” than what was shown on social media.

“The determination was that it was not [a Nazi salute],” Venville said.

Meanwhile, Burns was unsatisfied with the answer, saying the outcome of the ANU investigation was “astounding.”

Students barricade the Gaza Solidarity encampment on the campus of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, on May 27, 2024. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

ANU’s Meeting with Jewish Students

The Labor MP then brought up the May 2024 meetings between university leadership and Jewish students, which aimed to assure students that action was being taken to address anti-Semitic events.

Burns asked whether they were told about specific incidents on campus.

Bell said the Nazi salute incident, among others, were not discussed during two of the meetings as they were under investigation.

“As is true with all of our disciplinary proceedings, once a disciplinary proceeding starts, we don’t talk about its contents with other people,” she said.

“At that point, multiple disciplinary proceedings across campus on many issues were running, and that was one of them.”

Venville added that the university did talk about some anti-Semitic events on campus in her meeting with the Jewish students.

“We talked about Jewish students’ feelings towards that. We listened to their concerns and worries, and we responded,” she said.