The Jewish University Experience Survey of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) was prepared by the Social Research Centre, owned by the Australian National University. The Survey has gained lurid headlines in local Jewish media, the ABC, and around the world.
The Social Research Centre has a considerable track record in social research. Why the Centre took on the brief – or at least did not present an explanation of its limitations leaves me baffled, because it doesn’t even meet the standard that would be required by an undergraduate student doing an online survey. The politics of the ZFA represent a hard line on Israeli politics, even resulting in recent chiding from other Zionist organisations. Furthermore, AUJS is no ordinary student club, but a national organisation linked to, and sponsored by Zionist organisations and philanthropists. It runs political training seminars for students in Canberra, and has access to the leadership of the Coalition and the Labour party. I doubt that many other student organisation and indeed other community organisations have such easy access to politicians.
With this background in mind, we can see that this Survey, on a slick website, is in truth a skewed sample intended for political purposes: to beat up universities about an alleged epidemic of antisemitism, using problems that have occurred in the US or the UK to argue that the situation is similar to that here. The Lobby’s object: to have the highly contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance non-legally binding Working Definition of antisemitism imposed on Australian universities. Thus far, universities have by and large rejected the Working Definition, but the Lobby won’t take no for an answer…. Read the rest below…. [this originally appeared at https://johnmenadue.com/manufactured-statistics-for-a-university-beat-up/ on 26 August 2023]
