RMIT faces scrutiny over defence research ties amid student free speech debate over Gaza solidarity
Original framing: “Student claiming RMIT is ‘complicit in genocide’ in social media post faces misconduct action” — The Guardian - World
The RMIT campus sits on land forcibly taken from the Wurundjeri people, a history of dispossession that parallels the Palestinian Nakba. Indigenous scholars argue that universities, as settler-colonial institutions, are structurally complicit in ongoing violence. The student’s accusation reflects a broader Indigenous critique of institutions that profit from oppression while silencing dissent.
The RMIT case exposes how neoliberal universities function as nodes in a global military-industrial-academic complex, where dissent is criminalised to protect lucrative contracts with weapons manufacturers.
This mirrors historical patterns of institutional complicity in state violence, from apartheid South Africa to the Vietnam War, where universities prioritised corporate and state interests over ethical accountability. The student’s prosecution reflects a broader erasure of marginalised voices, particularly Palestinian and Indigenous perspectives, which are systematically silenced in mainstream debates. Indigenous critiques of settler-colonial institutions like RMIT reveal the hypocrisy of framing dissent as 'misconduct' while the university profits from land theft and state terror. A systemic solution requires divestment, independent ethics oversight, and truth-telling processes that centre the voices of those most impacted by institutional complicity.