The Melbourne Jewish Left, Communism and the Cold War. Responses to Stalinist Anti-Semitism and the Rosenberg Spy Trial

This article explores the political marginalisation of the Melbourne Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism during the Cold War. Attention is drawn to contending views about the nature of the Council's links with communism. By comparing the Council's response to two coinciding international events during 1952 and 1953 - the anti-Jewish show trials in Stalinist Eastern Europe, and the Rosenberg spy trial in the USA - evidence is derived confirming the dominance of communist influence within the Jewish Council at that time. In order, I examine the Australian Jewish political context in which the Council operated and its relations with the wider Jewish community prior to the Cold War; explore rival arguments concerning the Council's links with communism and the Australian Communist Party; examine the major features of Stalinist anti-Semitism and the Council's response to them; recount the Council's reaction to the Rosenberg Spy Trial and Doctors Plot; and conclude that the Council lost influence because it fell under the control of a pro-Soviet group unwilling to recognise and attack anti-Semitism on the political left.     

Pursuing gender equality in the African University

Abstract

Africa urgently needs strong, creative and intellectually productive institutions of higher learning to address continental knowledge needs in a manner that is closely grounded in the political and cultural aspirations of Africa's diverse peoples; women as well as men. This requires academics and academic administrators working in African universities to be deeply sensitive to the challenges of gender equality, social justice and democratisation. It requires that we dedicate ourselves to building knowledge institutions that demonstrate these basic values and work towards producing both the people and the ideas that will see to their propagation in the wider society. Ensuring equity of access at all levels and in all areas of the higher education sector is a minimal condition for the pursuit of gender equality. This requires developing a combination of institutional and intellectual strategies to advance the practice of gender equality in educational institutions, and to equip them for the production of both the people and the ideas that existing political and policy commitments to gender equality demand.