Australians need better understanding of Holocaust, professor tells inquiry

Better understanding of Holocaust impact on Jewish Australians needed, professor tells royal commission Fri 17 Jul 2026 at 2:22pm In short: The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has been told there needs to be a better understand how the Holocaust has affected Jewish Australians. Monash University professor David Slucki told the inquiry a better literacy about Jewish Australians would enable the broader community to understand "what lies at the heart of people's anger and angst". What's next? The commission has also heard a seventh block of hearings will take place in Sydney, focusing on protests at the Sydney Opera House and outside NSW Parliament. A Monash University professor has told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion of the importance of Holocaust teachings. David Slucki established the Monash Initiative for Rapid Research into Antisemitism (MIRRA) to better understand the nature and depth of antisemitism in Australia and look at ways to combat it. A training program developed out of the research has since been delivered to about 17,000 executive leaders and university front line staff across 17 universities including one in New Orleans. Professor Slucki told the commission there was a need in the community for basic literacy to better understand who Jewish Australians are. "If you can't understand that, you can't understand what lies at the heart of people's anger and angst,"he said. "The impact of generational trauma … so people could understand where the distress is coming from." He said Holocaust teachings played an important role in that. "The impact of the Holocaust animates the way people think about what it means to be Jewish," he said. "There's this critical mass of Jews in Australia that ascended from Holocaust survivors. The way we live our lives is really shaped by the message we take from that and that's different for every person. "We're really trying to show that people shouldn't make assumptions that just because someone is Jewish, about how they are Jewish." The royal commission has this week been sitting in Melbourne and focusing on universities and the experiences of students and staff. On Friday, the royal commission announced a new seventh block that will have a particular focus on two protests in New South Wales. One of the protests saw hundreds of people rally at the Sydney Opera House in October 2023 while the building was lit in the colours of the Israeli flag. The other saw a number of neo-Nazi's rally outside NSW parliament in November 2025. The block will look at the democratic function played by protests in general, hateful conduct that sometimes occurs in the context of protests and policing response to protests. Professors says he believes most Jewish Australians wanted a two-state solution Professor Slucki also gave evidence on the complexities of Zionism and anti-Zionism. "These terms are not so simplistic," he said. "When we teach about our Israeli conflict … we teach about the conflicting and contesting narratives for both people. "For most people, there is a lot of pain and fear and we need to recognise that as a starting point." He said he believed that most Jewish Australians wanted to see a two-state solution, which was something he would investigate further in an upcoming survey of his. "Most people don't want violence, they don't want to see endless conflict, they want to see peace in the region," he said. He encouraged respectable conversations, but said clear definitions of academic freedom and freedom of speech needed to be understood. "When we disagree with someone we see them as wrong or bad and evil and that's the kind of thing we want to start pulling Australian people away from," he said. "We all watch the violence and events in the Middle East … we watch it with a great deal of distress and much of the anger, distress that we see comes from a degree of hurt." Reports of violence to university regulator rise after October 7, commission hears Later in the hearing, the chief executive officer of an independent national quality assurance regulator today gave evidence that incidents reported to the body increased following the October 7 attack. Mary Russell from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) said there were concerns for "increasing incidents of violence … whether that be physical or verbal" as a result of "outside actors" or people who were not part of the university community attending protests on campus. The regulator had became aware of people who were not staff or students at the universities participating in protests particularly around inner-city based campuses. "When we spoke to universities they told us that they had strong suspicions that people taking part in protests were inciting or inflating [violence] … that did not appear to be students or staff," she said. She said "universities were very reluctant about making a call on what constituted antisemitism", but that the regulator was looking to issue a statement of regulatory expectation in relation to definitions as a matter of urgency.