Controversial anti-Israel academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has had her $870,000 taxpayer-funded research grant suspended after she bragged earlier this year about bending research rules. Education Minister Jason Clare in January ordered an investigation into Dr Abdel-Fattah’s funding and the Australian Research Council (ARC) flagged “significant concerns” after it was revealed she bragged about bending research rules during an appearance at a controversial anti-racism symposium at the Queensland University of Technology. Dr Abdel-Fattah in 2022 received a four-year $870,269 Future Fellowship grant from the ARC for a “hidden history” of “Arab/Muslim Australian social movements since the 1970s”. She said on social media she would be “fighting this racist process”. “Stay tuned for GoFundMe campaign for legal support,” the academic posted. The university said it had “complied with a notice of suspension received from the Australian Research Council to immediately cease all activity in respect of a research project being undertaken by Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah”.
It said it had engaged an audit and accounting firm to “ensure the application of grant funds has been consistent with the purposes for which the funding was provided”, and that it will appoint two “respected international research academic leaders to examine compliance”. The university will also “examine whether all parties involved in the project have disclosed any actual or potential conflict”. ARC chairman Peter Shergold told Senate estimates that it was now on Macquarie University to investigate whether the grant was being “used for the purposes that were intended”. “This is about an issue which is fundamental to Senate estimates,” Professor Shergold said. “It’s about the acquittal of public funds. It’s about someone who gets a grant and with that grant there are conditions attached.” ARC chief executive Richard Johnson said the organisation was approached by Macquarie University following media reporting on Dr Abdel-Fattah’s comments where she bragged about bending research rules. “I look for ways to bend rules, and refuse and subvert them,” she said earlier this year.
She said that instead of complying with an ARC requirement to hold a “traditional” academic conference as a condition of her grant, she invited “women … of all different backgrounds … to send me their most beloved quotes from their warriors, their feminist women, their scholars, people who have inspired them and given them that revolutionary zeal and nourished them”. Dr Johnson said that following media report, Macquarie University and the ARC had “agreed to a set of steps” prior to the Education Minister’s intervention. “It was prima facie concerning to them,” he said. “Prima facie it was concerning to us.” Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi repeatedly questioned the ARC leadership about starting an investigation, which she said showed the ARC had succumbed to “racist pressure”. Senator Faruqi, earlier on in the hearing, said she, “as a brown, Muslim woman … I find it deeply, deeply disturbing for a white, male education minister to lead the charge against Dr Abdel-Fattah, an Arab woman”. Professor Shergold told Senator Faruqi he was “genuinely bewildered”.
“If your job as a public servant is to, on behalf of government, administer, at least indirectly in this case, public grants, and a significant allegation is made … that money is being misused, the first thing I will do is to have an investigation,” he said. “In this case, it is through Macquarie University. I haven’t prejudged this case.” ARC said the length of time of the investigation would depend on Macquarie University. This was not the first time Dr Abdel-Fattah’s ARC grant had come under scrutiny. It was first questioned after she led a “kids’ excursion” to the University of Sydney’s pro-Palestine encampment protest in April 2024, where primary school-aged children led each other in chants of “intifada”. Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson then demanded Mr Clare cut her funding: “Australian taxpayers should not be providing $870,000 to an activist academic who has engaged in such appalling conduct.” Macquarie University this month admitted Dr Abdel-Fattah had previously made “anti-Semitic” statements but that the term was not well defined in law and hence it had limited capacity to take disciplinary action.
“On Boxing Day last year this staff member of yours did a tweet that said, ‘May 2025 be the end of Israel’: Is that anti-Semitic?” LNP MP Henry Pike asked vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton during a hearing. “As an individual I can certainly accept that that could be construed as anti-Semitic,” Professor Dowton replied. “What about when she changed her profile picture to a picture of a Palestinian paratrooper the day after the October 7 attacks, is that anti-Semitic?” Mr Pike asked. “Personally, I believe that is an anti-Semitic statement but whether I believe something is anti-Semitic or not doesn’t necessarily hold that it would be subject to the test of law,” Professor Dowton said.
Source: Compiled by APN from media reports
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