The University of Technology Sydney let Jewish students down in its handling of complaints after a pro-Palestine protest, Australia’s Education Minister Jason Clare has said.
The National Student Ombudsman found that UTS failed to follow its complaints policy and did not respond productively to feedback from students who said they had been singled out because of their Jewish identity.
The complaints followed a National Day of Action for Palestine rally in March 2025. During the event, a guest speaker addressed a counter-protester, saying: “Jews … should feel uncomfortable, … and that includes that fellow over there”.
UTS commissioned an external review soon afterwards in response to the risk of harm. However, the ombudsman found serious shortcomings in the way the university handled both the review and the complaints.
“Some Jewish students did not receive a response at all to their complaints about the behaviour at the protest,” the report said. “Those who did receive a response received generic responses that did not address their specific concerns.”
The review was later expanded to cover an April 2025 event organised by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, known as AUJS, to discuss the effects of the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
The university had approved the AUJS event, but an unauthorised student protest was also held. The ombudsman said the external review wrongly recommended naming AUJS as a group that had failed to follow UTS event procedures.
Its investigation found that the conclusion had been shaped by bias and incorrect information, partly because of the way the university had designed the expanded review.
The UTS vice-chancellor subsequently published an action plan adopting all the review’s recommendations, including the one naming AUJS. The ombudsman said the university had not publicly identified those responsible for organising the unauthorised concurrent protest.
“The university had a responsibility to oversee the review and identify factual inconsistencies prior to publishing the review’s outcomes,” the report said. “We found that it failed to do so, and in the process further alienated Jewish students.”
The ombudsman also said it was unfair that AUJS had not been given an opportunity to comment before the review was published, warning that the recommendation was likely to have unfairly damaged the group’s reputation.
“Universities need to take complaints of racism in all its forms seriously,” Mr Clare said. “The ombudsman’s findings show that UTS let Jewish students down.”
The National Student Ombudsman was established by the Australian Government in February 2025.
