Don’t turn UQ into a surveillance campus
Your social media is not management’s business - Say no to permanent social-media surveillance and expanded executive control.
The Group of Eight’s Expert Advisory Committee on Combatting Antisemitism (EACCA) was established to recommend how Australian universities should respond to antisemitism. But its report (read it HERE) recommendations go far beyond combating discrimination and harassment. If implemented, they could fundamentally change how our universities are governed—and the freedoms staff and students can exercise within them.
The EACCA proposals would expand the powers of university executives to monitor staff and students, scrutinise social media activity, regulate protest and political expression, intervene in curriculum and teaching, and decide when lawful speech or behaviour constitutes an institutional “risk”. They also seek to move aside existing protections for academic freedom under the French Model Code, while providing few corresponding guarantees of transparency, accountability or independent scrutiny.
Of particular concern is the proposed expansion of monitoring beyond campus. Once powers to monitor staff and student social media are embedded in university policy, they could become part of the permanent machinery of university management—available to scrutinise what we say and do online long after the immediate controversy has passed.
This is about what kind of university we want to work and study in—and who should have the power to decide what we can say, teach, research and protest.
Find out what is being proposed. Then take action.
1. Read the short summary
Get the key facts about the EACCA recommendations and what they could mean for staff and students - HERE.
2. Read the full joint UQU–NTEU analysis
Students and staff have come together to examine the recommendations in detail, including their implications for academic freedom, civil liberties, surveillance, executive power and university governance. Read the joint analysis report HERE.
3. Write to the Vice-Chancellor
Tell Professor Deborah Terry that UQ should not implement the EACCA recommendations. Ask her instead to lead the Australian university sector by defending academic freedom, civil liberties, transparent governance and the right of staff and students to engage in lawful teaching, research, debate, protest and political expression without being subjected to a new regime of institutional surveillance.
Tell UQ: protect academic freedom. Reject surveillance. Reject executive overreach.