An open letter signed by 400 academics and public figures from 19 universities warns that the Australian Political Studies Association’s decision “undermines the moral and intellectual integrity of political science” and wants the keynote rescinded.
More than 400 academics, journalists, politicians, economists, and First Nations leaders have signed an Open Letter calling on the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) to withdraw its keynote invitation to Bill Shorten at its 2025 annual conference, describing the decision “out of step with this political moment” amid Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Written by Nasser Mashni, President of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN) and Kara Beavis, feminist political economist, and supported by award-winning journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory Antony Lowenstein, the letter argues that APSA’s keynote choice “rewards establishment privilege” and “undermines the discipline’s ethical basis.”
Signatories to the Open Letter come from nineteen Australian universities, including Deakin University, University of Melbourne, Griffith University, University of Queensland, University of Sydney, Western Sydney University, Flinders University, Macquarie University, as well as from independent research institutes, policy think tanks, journalists, and community leaders.
The campaign, which has gained hundreds of new signatures in just a few weeks, continues to grow rapidly. Academic disciplines represented among the signatories include political science, political economics, labour policy, public policy, gender studies, Australian politics, economics, ecological economics, media studies, cultural studies, moral philosophy, history, and migration studies.
Signatories include Australian feminist Clementine Ford, Antony Loewenstein, well known First Nations advocate Professor Chelsea Watego, Brisbane City Councillor Trina Massey, state MP Michael Berkman, recent MP Amy McMahon (2020-2024), former city councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan, award-winning writers Omar Sakr and Sara Haddad, and Uncle Ken Canning (Burraga Gutya), the first Aboriginal graduate of UTS.
The Open Letter calls on APSA to replace Shorten with First Nations and Palestinian scholars and politicians whose lived experience and scholarship much more closely aligns with the conference theme, “Challenges for Australia and Beyond in a Changing World.” It highlights respected alternatives such as Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, Dr Amy McQuire, and Senator Mehreen Faruqi.
The letter champions scholastic integrity and says that the keynote decision “undermines the values our discipline claims to uphold”. The letter reflects a growing global demand for accountability in public institutions. It sends a clear message that Israel’s “good friends” are not welcome in spaces that claim to advance knowledge and the discipline’s evolution.
Open Letter: https://www.change.org/p/academics-politicians-first-nations-elders-unite-apsa-drop-shorten-amid-genocide
ATTRIBUTABLE QUOTES
Nasser Mashni, President, Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN):
“APSA’s decision to offer its central podium to Bill Shorten is deeply disturbing. We have witnessed genocide and settler-colonial violence in Gaza in real time, for more than two years, all the while Australian leaders, including Shorten, as a senior member of the Albanese Government, enabled this through our participation in the global arms supply chain. A politician complicit in genocide should not then enjoy positive publicity and a prestigious stage at the University of Melbourne.
When institutions platform and promote politicians who have actively assisted genocide, even as it continues, we must stand together and say clearly: this is unacceptable. Bill Shorten is not welcome.
APSA must go beyond official résumé and give conference participants the spaces to acknowledge Shorten’s complicity in Gaza, as well as his compromised ethics in the revolving door between government, disability policy, and the elite echelons of academia, and how this sits within a reckoning of political science.
This keynote choice represents a hollow performance, one that abandons moral principle and is disingenuous to the scholars APSA claims to represent. First Nations and Palestinian scholars and political scientists deserve this podium.”
Antony Loewenstein, award-winning journalist, documentary maker, and author of The Palestine Laboratory, with works published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, and translated into a dozen languages:
“Universities should exhibit moral courage, not replicate government’s moral failures.
As a senior member of the Albanese Government, Bill Shorten ignored Israel’s atrocities in Gaza while denigrating the millions of Australians who have protested for Palestine. He has called peaceful demonstrations ‘tasteless’, ‘coercive’, and said he ‘doesn’t agree’. This stance undermines intellectual freedoms and collective dissent: core pillars of democratic society.
Sixteen-year-olds have shown more integrity, arguing that standing in solidarity with Palestine is worth missing a few hours of school, as reported by Adeshola Ore in The Guardian Australia (23 November 2023). Shorten’s attitude reflects a disregard for anti-genocide sentiment and for young people’s moral agency.
Academic conferences that normalise such politics and uncritically platform Israel’s allies legitimise systems of impunity that scholarship should dismantle. As our Open Letter highlights, Shorten’s A$860,000 vice-chancellor salary sits uneasily within a university sector where 70 per cent of staff survive on temporary contracts and A$250 million is owed in unpaid wages.
Australia’s political scientists, journalists, and postgraduate researchers share a duty to interrogate genocide, state capture, and structural inequality, not to comfort or elevate those who perpetuate them.
APSA is now officially on notice.”
Kara Beavis, feminist political economist and gender-based violence scholar, former policy manager and research director with experience in London, Sydney, and Johannesburg:
“APSA accepted my paper for the 2025 conference program, but in light of the recent keynote announcement, I can’t in good conscience participate.
Bill Shorten served as Minister for the NDIS during $14 billion in cuts. As recently as August this year, the Albanese Government enacted that legacy by removing essential supports for autistic children from the scheme: exactly what parents and families had long feared.
I live with the consequences of this contraction of Australia’s flagship disability program. Despite clear, independently assessed evidence of my disabilities, I am unable to access fundamental NDIS supports that would be life-changing for me, my family, and my career.
Expecting disabled academics to attend, present, and applaud the architect of these harms is indefensible. As a peak professional body, APSA owes its members safety and accountability in practice, not relegated to theory or policy.
This political moment is far from normal or acceptable. A flagship conference like APSA’s should reflect the overlapping crises of our time and lead with integrity: by centring First Nations and Palestinian scholars and political representatives.”
BACKGROUND
The APSA Conference, hosted by the University of Melbourne from 25–27 November 2025, is the flagship annual gathering of Australia’s political science community. Bill Shorten’s keynote address is scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, 26 November 2025, at the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus (Old Arts Building, Public Lecture Theatre).
Signatories cite Shorten’s record as a “good friend to Israel,” his $14 billion in NDIS cuts, and his swift appointment as vice-chancellor as emblematic of establishment privilege and a decision profoundly out of step with the current political moment. They call on APSA to:
- Rescind the keynote invitation immediately.
- Appoint Palestinian and First Nations scholars as replacement keynotes, with full institutional support; and
- Acknowledge the harm and misjudgement, taking public responsibility for its correction.