Statements are continuing to be sent to Macquarie University, in Sydney, opposing its refusal to affiliate a club of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).

The IYSSE fulfilled all requirements to attain club status. Its application, however, was rejected on the bogus grounds that it had the same aims as the pseudo-left Macquarie Socialists group. The IYSSE has extensively documented the irreconcilable differences between the two organisations, and they have been acknowledged by Macquarie Socialists.

Despite its pretext thus being completely debunked, management has refused to budge. That demonstrates that it is engaged in political censorship.

Sign the petition to demand that the IYSSE be affiliated, and send statements to management, copied to the IYSSE.

Below are statements from a diverse group of workers and retirees from around the world.

To University Management, Macquarie University:

I am sending this email as a protest against the indefensible decision to reject club status to the International Youth and Students for Social Equality. The argument that the Macquarie Socialist club and the IYSSE have the same goals and purposes is entirely bogus, as just a cursory reading of their positions on a range of issues would bear out.

This is nothing more than a blatant attack on free speech rights and students' democratic right to know the IYSSE perspective. I urge you to reverse your decision and grant club status to the IYSSE.

Sincerely,
Lawrence (US)

Individual members of the university management and students closely cooperating with it must turn against the administration’s hand in effectively banning club affiliation for IYSSE, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

At a time when the full force of military propaganda is once again being deluged upon the Australian population, this time via the Talisman Sabre war games, IYSSE must be granted the democratic right to have its powerful anti-war voice heard from its own unique club platform on the university’s campus.

The type of suppression targeting IYSSE should be particularly deplored by Australians. Not only is it a transparent act of political censorship. It is one that is completely in line with the US’s brutal prosecution of Julian Assange.

In both cases state power is attempting to silence the voices it most fears will go on to expose the true extent of its tyrannical wrong-doing. In both cases the method employed to thwart freedom of expression is to arbitrarily and hypocritically deny the course of legal due process. Such an abuse of principled legislation and campus rules constitutes a grave offence against a society’s humanity. And once established and allowed to spread this kind of pathological behaviour will dissolve our humanity into fascism.

I therefore call on Macquarie University staff and student bodies to immediately speak out against this travesty of justice. And I draw their attention to comparable but even more deplorable developments underway in Germany, from where I now write.

On Monday 17th of this month, the Student Representative Conference (FSVK) at the Ruhr University Bochum voted to request university management to ban from club affiliation organisations that held events like a recent IYSSE students’ anti-war meeting. An IYSSE meeting in May, which analysed the historical and political background of the Ukrainian war, was castigated by the FSVK because it called for a mass movement against war and disseminated allegedly 'pro-Russian narratives'. The FSVK resolution went on to deny any university platforms at all for campus groups that apparently contravened its notion of just and unjust wars.

That the FSVK resolution was forced through by employing thoroughly undemocratic tactics is a consequence of the extreme right-wing nationalism increasingly on the rise throughout Europe. Many sections of the Continent are reeling from an accelerating process of deindustrialisation. This has been the result of inflationary policies of economies in decline, an utterly senseless war in Ukraine and the subjugation of craven European policy makers to US hegemony.

As has been the case throughout the Western world in times like these, universities and mainstream media far too often capitulate to the dark forces outside their ambit that would abolish their autonomy. The Ruhr University Bochum is already in close cooperation with German militarism. Its computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers and psychologists are invited to work with the German army and in military think tanks. But academics and journalists must always be prepared to critically assess and, when necessary, stridently denounce what is going on in their countries’ universities.

On the eve of World War II, the ingenious insight of the poet W.H Auden enabled him to crystallise into a simple two-word phrase the monumental tragedy of Western civilisation that led to the rise of fascism. He wrote of his times as a period of “intellectual disgrace”.

Those two words need to be dwelt upon long and hard. But for the moment, to turn poetry into prose and put it simply: there are some people who really should know better ... and do more.

Employees and students at Macquarie University, it is time for you to blow the whistle! Resist this attack on basic human rights! Demand club affiliation for the IYSSE!

Blow the whistle! Blow it again! And remember Julian Assange!

Sincerely,
RH, retired teacher, NRW, Germany

To whom it should concern,

I wish to lodge my protest at your decision to not affiliate the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) to the Student Engagement, Inclusion and Belonging division of university management, and the deplorable Kafkaesque manner in which this was carried out and continues to be carried out. You should all be ashamed of yourselves as human beings.

The article published recently explains the current situation and how your actions and stance have been exposed as clearly unjustifiable.

I have no doubt that this report is wholly truthful. However, if there is any reason not mentioned in it or given to the IYSSE to support your decision then please let me and everybody know. If you are unable to do so then I demand that the IYSSE be affiliated immediately.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/15/ttxi-j15.html

Yours sincerely,
Jim (civil engineer, South Australia)

I support your right to organize against the imperialist lies and aggression against Russia and China. The propaganda system serves to brainwash people and support the war drive, while social services get slashed, and strikes get blocked.
Stand strong, and keep up your good fight!
Best regards, Steve from the USA.

To the management of student clubs at Macquarie University in Sydney,

As a teacher of history from the United States and part of the global education community, and even more so as a person recognizing the lessons of the past are indeed the signposts for today, I call on you to [take] act on the request of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) for you to overturn your anti-democratic decision refusing to affiliate the IYSSE as a club at the Macquarie University.

This is an international and vital issue in the United States, Australia, and internationally because governments and oligarchies globally are undemocratically placing the universities more and more directly at the service of militarism in a madness leading into World War Three. Lessons of history are being ignored and  and a climate of intimidation created against the IYSSE for pointing this out and campaigning for the working class internationally to use its power to end the war. The material roots of the war in the interests of capitalist imperialism call for students, youth, and workers to fight for socialism. The IYSSE has campaigned globally for this as has no other organization in Australia or internationally. Yet, you fraudulently deny the IYSSE club affiliation on the basis that it is enough for for you to have affiliated a Socialists Club, which is associated with the pseudo-left Socialist Alternative organization, going as far as absurdly, and what can only be interpreted as with malign political intention, suggested that the IYSSE join the MQ Socialists of whom the IYSSE has made principled criticism.

This is blatant dishonesty and censorship and has no place most of all at a place of education. Defense of democracy and the future of humanity against fascism and war are again at a turning point in history. Along with the actions of the young people and the working class internationally, it requires that you affiliate the IYSSE as a club at Macquarie University.

Sincerely,
Harvey

We call on all readers to support the fight to defend the IYSSE at Macquarie University by sending letters of protest over the rejection of the IYSSE’s affiliation to the Student Engagement, Inclusion and Belonging division of university management at studentgroups@mq.edu.au, and CC iysse.macquarie@gmail.com.

Get in touch with the IYSSE to find out how you can be involved:

Email: iysseaus@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/IYSSEaustralia
Twitter: @IysseA
Instagram: @iysse.aus