The leadership of the Australian National University has given seven students involved in the pro-Palestine campus camp until Friday to clear their tents or face disciplinary action.
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So far, so easy - but implementing the intention may well be hard, if not impossible.
Citizens have a right to protest. The ACT government says so: "The right to peaceful assembly, including lawful protest, is protected in the ACT by section 15(1) of the Human Rights Act."
But there are constraints. The ACT Human Rights Commission said: "Like most rights, freedom of expression is not unlimited."
But the Commission added that "under the ACT Discrimination Act, vilification on the grounds of race, nationality or religion which occurs in public in the ACT is unlawful".
All the same, it is harder to prevent a protest in the ACT than it is in other parts of Australia.
"It's a trickier landscape," Luke McNamara, of the faculty of law and justice at the University of New South Wales, said.
Other states have passed laws restricting protest. They were prompted by disruptive protests for different causes: anti-logging (Tasmania and Victoria), or climate change where protesters blocked coal shipments or industry conferences (NSW, South Australia, Queensland).
But the ACT hasn't taken that path - though some demonstrations in the past have disrupted the daily Canberra routine.
In other states, the police can move protesters on for a number of reasons. If they look like they might damage property, for example, or intimidate people.
But in the ACT there is specific exemption for "demonstrating or protesting about a particular issue; or speaking, bearing or otherwise identifying with a banner, placard or sign or otherwise behaving in a way that is apparently intended to publicise the person's view about a particular issue".
So even if the ANU protesters did something "that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety", ACT law says the police can't intervene even on a public street let alone a technically private university campus.
In the United States, the police have moved into some students protest camps. In Australia that would be difficult in the absence of out-and-out crime being committed on the campus.
![Pro-Palestine protest at the ANU. Picture by Elesa Kurtz Pro-Palestine protest at the ANU. Picture by Elesa Kurtz](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/steve.evans/166f3e99-99d9-42d3-87b1-1b24a6e9a6f5.jpg/r826_774_6875_4818_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
So the university's hands are tied?
Not quite.
The ANU Student Code of Conduct says students must "interact fairly and in good faith with others, respect differing personal viewpoints, including cultural or religious perspectives as part of a culture which values academic freedom and debate".
On top of the Code of Conduct, there is the separate Student Discipline Rule "that governs the University's formal process for inquiring into reports of student misconduct".
According to the ANU, the seven students were asked to come to a hearing on Monday but refused to go. That could be an offence in itself.
The code's penalties range "from a reprimand to exclusion from the university".
So the university has two grounds for taking action against the seven: what they may or may not have done at the encampment, and failing to turn up for the meeting with the deputy vice-chancellor.
What might they have done at the encampment?
This is where it gets tricky for the university (and potentially helpful for the protesters and any lawyers they engage). Can the ANU seven (as they will no doubt be dubbed) be tied to a specific act of wrong-doing?
Some Jewish students complain that the very presence of the encampment at the centre of the campus is threatening. They believe some of the chants coming from it are anti-Semitic.
The camp, some students believe, has created a poisonous atmosphere where anti-Semitism has become more pronounced.
One student told The Canberra Times that she herself heard someone say "F--- the Jews" during a pro-Palestine chanting session, though it is not clear that it came from the camp rather than from a student passer-by.
At the annual general meeting of the ANU Students' Association, a student appeared to mimic Hitler by putting her finger under her nose like a Hitler moustache - but that wasn't actually at the camp.
Some Jewish students say the frequent chant at the camp of "from the river to the sea" is itself anti-Semitic because it implies the abolition of the state of Israel which stands on the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.
The Prime Minister himself noted: "I reckon if you asked those people who are chanting it, heaps of them wouldn't have a clue, wouldn't be able to find the Jordan on a map."
The phrase has been used by leaders of Hamas, which perpetrated the massacre of more than a thousand Israelis on October 7.
On top of that, one pro-Palestinian student at the ANU said on the radio: "Hamas deserves our unconditional support."
Some Jewish students say that this all creates a threatening environment for them where they do not feel safe, let alone welcome.
It amounts, they say, to hate speech which would be utterly condemned, not least by the camp protesters, if it were directed against other ethnic groups.
But the legal waters are muddy
Professor McNamara of the UNSW law school said he understood "the level of distress" but that wouldn't justify closing down the encampment.
Protests in the past, he said, like those against the South African Springbok rugby team or the Vietnam War, may have caused inconvenience and distress but "we expect a higher level of tolerance for the right to protest".
And disciplining individual students like the ANU seven would need specific incidents. There would need to be water-tight, strong evidence of wrongdoing. Were they the ones who chanted anti-Semitic slogans, for example?
"If the university does overstep the mark, you can be sure that lawyers will come out in droves pro bono to ensure that the students' due rights to protest are protected," he said.