Note, I said talk, not berate or lecture. Since October 7, so much of the debate around Gaza has felt like a lecture aimed at inflaming the situation further, particularly at the expense of anyone visibly identifying as Jewish or Muslim.

One of the sad legacies of our individualistic response to COVID, particularly in Victoria, appears to be our inability to stop and listen to another side. University lecturers unskilled in managing poor behaviour in class have been struggling with some students, who missed years of learning about respectful debate in high school.

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It is not surprising that some Jewish students and staff feel threatened. Some of the rhetoric yelled at them can sound brutal. But as a thoughtful colleague pointed out, in most cases there is no real force that could give the rhetoric any effect. The Israeli military’s actions in Gaza are actually brutal – 30,000 deaths and counting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, a large proportion of those children, and the systematic destruction of basic supports for life in a territory that is home to more than 2 million people.

In my own industry-focussed university, the RMIT students have been late to the protest party, with students at both Melbourne and Monash Universities joining their US counterparts weeks ago.

It’s not entirely surprising. There’s generally only a small subsection of students who can afford to protest. The students of 2024 that I observe often work multiple jobs to afford to live while studying, and those who hail from lower socio-economic groups or migrant backgrounds are largely terrified of being caught in a police or a university disciplinary action.

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But the 25 tents set up on RMIT’s artificial grass lawns on Monday night signalled to the university at large that the students are back, and they want to engage in the big issues.

Understanding what’s going on in Gaza, and why it has come to this, is a conversation that takes longer than a recorded university lecture and what better way for those long conversations to occur than around a heater on a cold autumn night. Jewish people are among the campus campers and their sympathisers. They are among the most interesting voices, because of the position from which they speak.

It’s been a long time since there were student protests on campus. Before COVID, Students for Climate Change were making regular and noisy protests about the need for us to do things differently. I do miss their reminders that we all need to do better.

I have wondered why there hasn’t been some about Ukraine, particularly after reports this week that Russia has been using chemical choking agents, in violation of international laws banning their use. Maybe it’s because the atrocities are not being committed in “our” name, in that Australia and the US alliance are perceived to clearly be on the right side in that one.

Unsurprisingly student protests do work. There is a well-known and much celebrated history of protests in the US that have helped end wars and halt some forms of racial discrimination.

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Australia’s student protest history has generally followed the US, with debates around the Vietnam war, capitalism, gender and race, as well as weaponising world conflicts with some local variations around Indigenous issues and logging in native forests.

The closest my own university has come to a serious protest was decades ago when students, upset by the introduction of up-front university fees, smashed into a Swanston St finance office and occupied it for 27 days.

It’s hard to know when the Palestinian encampments might disband this time. While the Students for Palestine have globally called for all universities to disclose which military contractors they work with, and to divest from them, the RMIT students have gone a step further, demanding that the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre close. The centre lists partnerships with firms Thales, BAE, Raytheon, the US Department of Defence, and Lockheed Martin.

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For a young person concerned about defence contractors, such demands make sense. For university administrators, perhaps the link is not so clear.

There’s an old saying, attributed to various historic figures, that if you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, and not a capitalist by 40 you have no brain.

Perhaps this generation of students can come up with a solution that is both heart and brain. Because every generation before them has been unable to do anything to find a sustainable long-term peaceful existence in the Middle East.

Alexandra Wake is an associate professor of journalism at RMIT. Her latest book is Transnational Broadcasting in the Indo-Pacific. The Battle for Trusted News and Information.

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