From The Australian

Uni chief blames race-row professor’s fans for threats

Greg Roberts, Bernard Lane

PLAIN-clothes police are patrolling Sydney’s Macquarie University in response to threats of violence against vice-chancellor Di Yerbury and ethnic students from supporters of a law professor who has been suspended over his views on race.

Professor Yerbury’s staff have received instructions from police on how to detect bombs and bio-hazards in mail. The vice-chancellor yesterday blamed supporters of the university’s associate law professor, Andrew Fraser, for threats against her and the university. “All those sending threats to us identified themselves as supporters of Drew Fraser,” Professor Yerbury said.

“I do not assume from that fact that he necessarily knows the senders, or that he would approve of their menaces and threats.”

The university suspended Professor Fraser from lecturing last month when he declared he would ignore an edict that he stop using his position to express his views on race, which included a claim that Africans had low IQs and were therefore a high crime risk. Professor Fraser has admitted to links with the Patriotic Youth League but has denied the neo-Nazi group’s claim that he was its legal adviser.

But the Macquarie University Law Society has demanded that Professor Fraser be immediately allowed back in his classroom on free-speech grounds and has set up a sub-committee to lobby Professor Yerbury on the issue.

Society president Nick Felton said the executive had agreed not to publicly comment on the policy, preferring to pursue it within the university. However, it is understood the society regards the university’s stated fear of violent disruption as a flimsy pretext for action against the academic and a worrying precedent. But in an email to Mr Felton, Professor Yerbury said: “You say you question our motivations. Just ask yourself this, Nick. If you received direct threats from extremist racist groups to the campus community, would you act to protect students or not?”

Professor Fraser said yesterday he doubted Professor Yerbury’s claims she had been threatened with violence.

“If there are threats of violence around, they are far more likely to be coming from the anti-racist brigade,” Professor Fraser said. But police in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood confirmed they were taking seriously several threats against the vice-chancellor.
Professor Yerbury said threats in emails and telephone calls had been directed at her, at the university more generally and at specified ethnic student groups. “The language used was extremely racially insulting,” she said. “Some of the emails were blatantly violent.”