Universities and settler colonialism in two countries: Australia and IsraelDhoombak Gooboowana: A history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, Volume 1: Truth By Ross L.Jones, JamesWaghorne, and MarciaLangton (Eds.), Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. 2024. pp. xxxii + 528. AUD$39.00 (paperback). ISBN 9785222881059Towers of ivory and steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom By MayaWind, London: Verso. 2024. pp. x + 278. AUD$42.99 (paperback). ISBN 9781804291740

This review essay focuses on two books that examine the relationship between universities and settler colonialism in two societies, namely Australia and Israel. Settler colonialism in Australia began with James Cook's ‘invasion’ of Botany Bay in 1770 and took the form of a full-blown settler colonial state with Federation in 1901. Settler colonialism in Israel was preceded by Jewish settlements in Palestine while it was a British mandated territory during the early 20th century but became official under a United Nations charter in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. This first volume is an attempt to acknowledge and publicly address the long, complex and troubled relationship between the Indigenous people of what we now call Australia and the University of Melbourne. It is a book about race and how it has been constructed by academics in the University. It is also about power and how academics have wielded it and justified its use against Indigenous populations, and about knowledge, especially the Indigenous knowledge that silently contributed to many early research projects and collection endeavours. (p. xv) They observe that the University of Melbourne is not unique given that universities ‘worldwide have grappled with their histories of racism’ (p. xv), notably US land-grant universities but also universities in Australia. Obviously, a similar volume to Dhoombak Goobgoowanna could be compiled for other Australian universities. Jones, Waghorne, Langton, and the many contributors to Dhoombak Goobgoowanna are to be commended for having started this process at the University of Melbourne (est. 1853), the second oldest university in Australia. Perhaps scholars, particularly anthropologists, at the University of Sydney (est. 1850) could initiate a similar project for Australia's oldest university. Barry, Spencer, Berry, Tate, and Wood Jones we find the various contrasting ways in which the early University thought of Indigenous Australia: the willingness to dismiss and disparage and only study Indigenous Australians to place them in a racial hierarchy; the belief that Indigenous Australians were to be pitied but protected from “progress”; and the minority view that valued Indigenous accomplishments but feared that they were doomed. (p. xxii) Dhoombak Goobgoowanna is organised into four parts, each of which focuses on the themes of place, human remains, settler colonial knowledge, and Indigenous knowledge. Part I on place consists of seven chapters that elaborate the concept of place, discuss the disruption of native flora and intrusion of invasive flora on the Parkville campus, and explore the relationship between settler colonial philanthropy and Indigenous dispossession. Part II on Indigenous human remains consists of five chapters including one on the Murray Black Collection of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains which were removed from the University of Melbourne for some decades because it was repatriated by court order. [Correction added on August 5, 2025, after First Online publication: The preceding sentence originally read, "… Murray Black Collection of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains situated at the University of Melbourne.".] Part III on settler colonial knowledge consists of seven chapters canvassing eugenics, the role of the history discipline in contributing to Aboriginal dispossession, and the contradictions of Frederic Wood Jones as a race scientist. Although Jones exhibited reactionary sentiments in various ways, he adopted counter-hegemonic postures by attacking the prevailing theories of Indigenous inferiority and advocating for policies to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians. Part IV on Indigenous knowledge has eleven chapters exploring, among other topics, venom as a vector of Indigenous knowledge at the University of Melbourne, the Indigenous Knowledge Institute situated at the University of Melbourne, Indigenous astronomy, the West Arnhem Land Dog Health Program, and Indigenous healing. Part V as the concluding section consists of two chapters. In his chapter, James Waghorne discusses the naming and renaming of buildings at the University of Melbourne as part of a world-wide university practice. At Melbourne, the ‘appeal of naming buildings and theatres after the University's greatest figures’ (p. 472) accelerated in 1970 when the new administration building was named after the first vice-chancellor, Raymond Priestly. Shortly following that and the June defacing of the Richard Berry Building sign, Professor Ian Anderson, an Indigenous academic and at the time pro vice-chancellor (engagement), called for a review addressing the naming of buildings and places to ‘acknowledge the University's colonial and eugenic history, and to foster a critical and scholarly engagement with this history’ (pp. 477–478). [Correction added on August 5, 2025, after first online publication: The phrase “the details of which Waghorne fails to provide” was deleted from the following sentence: “Shortly following that and the June defacing of the Richard Berry Building sign, the details of which Waghorne fails to provide, Professor Ian Anderson, an Indigenous academic and at the time pro vice-chancellor (engagement), ….”] The review became incorporated into the University's third Reconciliation Action Plan as a ‘signature project’. In December 2016, the University Council voted to rename the Richard Berry Building the Peter Hall Building in honour of Peter Hall, the late professor of mathematics and statistics, as a symbolic censure of Berry's racist stances. However, the larger question is why buildings and theatres need to be named after individuals in the first place and thus contribute to a cult of personality. In the Australian context, perhaps they could be named after flora, fauna, waterways, geological formations, and so on, utilising Indigenous language terms. Such a practice might be an important step in decolonising the University of Melbourne, but it is important to take measures to prevent yet another form of symbolic tokenism such as is often the case in routinised acknowledgments of Indigenous people at events. What in the long run might be more significant would be for the University of Melbourne to make reparations to Indigenous people for the harm it has inflicted upon them over the course of its history. further form of restorative justice form would be a full and specific apology for the eugenic and racial scientism supported at the University, along with the industrial-scale use of Aboriginal bodies obtained by grave robbers – and clearly by other means, as some records suggest – for the teaching of dissection and anatomy. (p. 488) She informs readers that the second volume of Dhoombak Goobgoowanna, to be subtitled Voice, will discuss ‘some of the efforts of University staff, students and alumni to make amends’ for the injustices, including ‘murders, grave-robbing and humiliation’ (p. 489) perpetrated on Indigenous people in the pursuit of racist scientism at the University of Melbourne. Maya Wind's provocative Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Universities provides a timely juxtaposition to Dhoombak Goobgoowanna in that, over the course of 2024, various Australian university campuses, including the University of Melbourne, served as demonstration and encampment sites for students and staff protesting the genocide directed by the Israeli state upon the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Wind is a Jewish-Israeli anthropologist who obtained access to Israeli state and military archives and libraries. She attended conferences and other events at Israeli universities and conducted interviews with Palestinian students and Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli faculty. Wind asserts that the Israeli universities are not safe spaces for Palestinian students on numerous counts, thus constituting an extension of the violence perpetrated against Palestinians. For example, Tel Aviv University permits Israeli soldiers to be in uniform and carry weapons on campus. She argues that many European and North American academic institutions legitimise Israeli universities by maintaining research collaborations and joint degree programs with Israeli universities. The same applies to various Australian universities. Conversely, some academic associations have adopted the three overarching demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement launched by some 170 Palestinian civil society groups in 2005, namely: (1) to end all colonisation of Arab lands and dismantle military occupation and walls within them; (2) to recognise the right to full equality of Palestinian citizens within Israel; and (3) to respect and promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. Several Free Palestine protesters attempted to mount a BDS campaign at the University of Melbourne, but with no apparent success. The Israeli Anthropological Association opposed the academic boycott of Israeli universities by the American Anthropological Association in 2023, claiming that Israeli universities are at the vanguard in the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens in Israel. Wind asserts that the eight major public Israeli universities are ‘directly and actively implicated in what has overwhelmingly been recognized as a regime of apartheid’ (pp. 11–12). The groundwork for this regime occurred with the establishment in 1918 of Hebrew University as a comprehensive institution focused on the development of a ‘new collective Jewish-Zionist identity and nation’ (p. 13). Along with Technion in Haifa and Rehovot, Hebrew University supported the dispossession of Palestinian lands in the lead-up to the 1948 war in the wake of the creation of the Israeli state. Israeli academics provided expertise to the Israeli military in its occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1967. Palestinian universities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are overseen by the Israeli military. Wind discusses how the disciplines of archaeology, legal studies, and Middle Eastern studies legitimise the Israeli settler colonial state. Archaeology does this by constructing evidence to ‘support Israeli land claims through erasure of Arab and Muslim history’ (p. 24) and legitimises ‘Israeli use of excavations to expand Jewish settlement and expropriate Palestinian land’ (p. 24). Israel placed the Palestine Archaeological Museum under its military control. Legal studies provides a legal framework that justifies Israeli human rights violations and military actions. Middle Eastern Studies produces militarised knowledge about Middle Eastern cultures and societies that legitimises Israeli state violence against Palestinians. Further, Wind maintains that various Israeli universities were designed as regional outposts supporting Israel's territorial and demographic ambitions. For example, Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus overlooks occupied East Jerusalem; the University of Haifa is situated in Galilee, which has a large Palestinian population; Ben-Gurion University is situated in Naqab, another area with a large Palestinian population; and Ariel University is situated on the West Bank. Wind maintains that Israeli universities ‘serve as settlement outposts on confiscated Palestinian lands, warehouses of looted Palestinian books, and militarized bases’ (p. 88) supporting ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land. She explores how Israeli universities have contributed to the development and manufacture of weapons. The Weitzmann Institute and Technion function as the ‘military-scientific’ centre of the Israeli state. Israeli universities train Israeli soldiers before they are deployed to the OPT and provide specialised degree programs for high-ranking military officers. Various Israeli universities operate technological parks that collaborate with the security state and weapons corporations. Wild maintains that Israeli universities suppress both Jewish and Palestinian academics who research and teach about ‘Israeli settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid’ (p. 118). Declassified Israeli, US, and British archives in 1978 paved way for the emergence of Israel's ‘new historians’, such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, and Avi Shalim, who ‘called into question many widely accepted facts that were the bedrock of Israeli national ethos’ (p. 120). These historians quickly faced criticism from fellow Israeli academics and media, with most of them opting to leave Israel to teach elsewhere, such as the University of Exeter in the case of Ilan Pappe, perhaps the most prolific ‘new historian’. Palestinian academics, many of whom have challenged the foundational myths of the Israeli state, face systematic intimidation from Jewish students and colleagues. Wind explores how Israeli university administrations collaborate with the Israeli security state in monitoring Palestinian students who daily make their way through university buildings and campus streets ‘named after Israeli military and state leaders’ (p. 151) and hallways depicting ‘Zionist symbols and narratives’ (p. 151). Whereas Jewish student enrolments in undergraduate BA programs rose exponentially after 2000, Palestinian student enrolments in undergraduate BA programs increased slightly, remaining almost stagnant in 2009–2019. Palestinian students are often forced to study abroad or settle to study areas other than their preferences due to discriminatory admissions standards in Israeli universities. While Israeli universities have come to increasingly speak the rhetoric of diversity, they ‘maintain campuses as Jewish spaces that strictly regulate Muslim, Christian and Druze religious expression’ (p. 158). The University of Haifa situated in Galilee enrols the highest percentage of Palestinian students of any of the Israeli universities, but ‘has a notorious reputation among the Palestinian students for severe repression of political expression on campus’ (p. 162), subjecting them to disciplinary hearings for holding acts of peaceful protest and denying permits for such actions. Wind discusses the situation faced by Palestinian students from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in terms of persuing higher education. Historically, some have studied at Middle Eastern, Soviet, and US universities. What is today Birzeit University, situated on the outskirts of Ramallah, was established in 1924, initially offered associate degrees. With Israel's occupation of the West Bank, it evolved into the first Palestinian university offering four-year degrees and has served as a major centre of ‘Palestinian intellectual and political life for generations of Palestinian students’ (p. 174). Beginning with the First Intifada in 1987, Israel has escalated repression at Birzeit University and other Palestinian universities in the OPT, with the Israeli military monitoring and raiding study groups. Gaza has also had several universities, but probably most, if not all, of them have been obliterated along with homes, mosques, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure during the Gaza war commencing in October 2023. What is missing from Wind's book is a nuanced comparison between the situation of Palestinian faculty and students in Israeli universities and their counterparts in universities in the OPT. Only time will tell when and how Palestinian universities in Gaza will be rebuilt. Institutions of higher education have indeed played a critical role in their expropriation of Indigenous lands and the expansion of colonial settlement, particularly in Anglo-dominant settler societies established under the aegis of the British Empire. From the United States to Canada to Australia [emphasis added], New Zealand, and South Africa, Anglo settler states developed their institutions of higher education through appropriating unceded territory. (p. 193) Obviously, this observation applies to the University of Melbourne, a situation discussed in detail in Dhoombak Gooboowana. A comparative review of these books is timely in the light of the Free Palestine demonstrations on various Australian universities, including at the University of Melbourne, and the response of university corporate managers. This response includes a recent statement on anti-Semitism released by Universities Australia in late February 2025, which appears to conflate it in part with anti-Zionism. The statement draws upon the new definition of Holocaust denial on the part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that equates any reference to Zionismasracism, as anti-Semitism. While Zionists often employ the Holocaust as a rationale for the creation of Israel, Zionism historically predates the Holocaust and scattered the seeds for the creation of Israel as a settler colony. The IHRA definition, in essence, shuts down any serious discussion of the notion of a Greater Palestine or ‘one state solution’ in which Palestinians, Jews, Christians, religious people, and secular people can live together in harmony and on equal and democratic terms. Hugh Gusterson (2017, p. 435) urges anthropologists do ‘homework’, to conduct ‘rigorous, systematic studies of the institutions in which academic anthropologists spend many of their waking hours’ because they are ‘central to contemporary struggles over race, gender, sexuality, international migration and neoliberalism’. Anthropologists have, in recent years, contributed to the interdisciplinary endeavour termed critical university studies that ‘interrogates structures of higher education and their entanglements with national and global institutions, and political movements’ (Singh & Vora, 2023, p. 39). Given that Maya Wind is an anthropologist, her book Tower of Ivory and Steel clearly makes an anthropological contribution to this interdisciplinary speciality area. Furthermore, given that Marcia Langton is an anthropologist and an editor of, and contributor to, Dhoombak Gooboowana, that volume also makes an anthropological contribution to critical university studies. I highly recommend both books to TAJA readers and to general readers. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

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