Trans row: v-c’s email about vandalism ‘made staff feel unsafe’

The union branch at Australia’s top-ranked university has stressed its opposition to property damage by campus activists, amid an acrimonious dispute over gender identity.

David Gonzalez, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) president at the University of Melbourne, said “civil disobedience” was a “tried and true” tactic in the sector but should not extend to vandalism. “I do not support breaking the law unless there’s a considered reason,” he told Times Higher Education.

In an email to members, Mr Gonzalez had appeared to shrug off destruction by transgender activists. “Transphobia [causes] so much more damage and hurt than graffiti and stickers could ever do,” he wrote.

Last Thursday, balaclava-clad activists smashed windows and sprayed graffiti on a Parkville campus building, in an escalation of a campaign against a “gender critical” philosopher who argues that people cannot change their biological sex. Posters on campus have decried the academic and warned that students who do not boycott her subject are “on the side of fascists”.

In an email on Friday, vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said police were investigating the latest incident as a criminal matter, and condemned the campaign to “vilify” staff and students.

“Let me be unequivocally clear – such intentional acts of damage, violence or vilification against others will not be tolerated,” his email says. “I implore everyone involved to…interact respectfully with one another…and stop taking implacable stances. Resorting to criminal acts and other violent behaviour is never the solution. We are surely better than that.”

In response, Mr Gonzalez criticised the vice-chancellor’s “uncharacteristically scathing” attack on “activists fighting for the equality of trans people”.

“Let me be unequivocal,” his email says. “There are not two sides of an argument here. One group are bigots and the other are trans people just trying to exist in safety. If Professor Maskell had taken action to protect the rights of trans people and stop the drumbeat of vilification of them under the guise of ‘academic freedom’, things may not have escalated to this point.”

Mr Gonzalez told Times Higher Education that the vice-chancellor’s email had left staff confused, with the term “violence” suggesting someone had been bashed. Details of the incident, including the smashing of windows, had only emerged later.

“I don’t endorse property destruction on campus, but that’s not what the message said. I have to look out for my members who felt threatened by an email from the vice-chancellor. This is about making sure my members feel like they work in a workplace that is safe. Really, it just boils down to that.”

He said he was “very comfortable” taking a position that could pitch him against some of his members, following the NTEU national council’s adoption of a resolution declaring that “gender critical ideology” is “used to defend transphobic ideology”.

“The union has a place for everyone, but I absolutely will not stand for defending vilification,” Mr Gonzalez said. “I am a queer, gender diverse person myself and have been working on these issues since 1995, so it’s personal. I’m not going to back down from standing up for my staff.”

A dissenting motion to the national council last November said it was not the union’s role to “police what people think”, and warned that the resolution could be “weaponised” to support efforts to “sack” NTEU members on the “wrong side” of the debate.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com