A former presidential candidate for Australia¡¯s academic union has been stood down by his university over a social media post?calling for ¡°Zionists¡± to be ¡°executed like we executed Nazis¡±.

Fahad Ali,?a molecular geneticist and sessional academic at the University of Sydney, shared the post on?social media platform X on 12 June.?

¡°I want Zionists executed like we executed Nazis,¡± Ali reportedly wrote.?

The university confirmed that it had suspended the employment of a casual academic ¡°pending further assessment¡± of his social media commentary, which apparently also included retweeting a post that had been removed by X for violating its rules against violent speech.

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¡°¡®Violent speech¡¯ people are on this website every single day celebrating¡­burning children alive,¡± Ali responded on the platform, according to newspaper. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me wanting to see these people hanged like the Nazis were post-Nuremberg is ¡®violent¡¯.¡±

A spokeswoman said the university was ¡°deeply disturbed¡± by the comments. ¡°We find them utterly unacceptable and we¡¯re taking immediate action. Hate speech has no place at our university and we have no hesitation in taking disciplinary action when our codes of conduct are breached.¡±

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Ali was one of a trio of university workers who unsuccessfully stood for leadership of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in a 2022 election.

Campaigning under the ¡°A New NTEU¡± ticket, the trio vowed to reform the union to better represent casual staff and give rank-and-file members more of a say. The three pledged to slash the salaries of the union¡¯s national leaders if they were elected.

They also supported a move to expel ¡°gender critical¡± academics from the union. It led to the passage of a motion to ¡°condemn the use of gender critical ideology when used to promote or defend transphobia¡± at the 2022 national council of NTEU delegates.

Their candidacy failed in the election, and the group¡¯s website domain now appears to have been taken over by a Canadian escort agency. 51³Ô¹Ï understands that the other two members of the ticket have since left academia.

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Ali developed and delivered courses in molecular biology, genetics and genomics at the University of Sydney, and has given media interviews on genetics and genetic editing. His research has centred on the relationship between bacteria in the gut and clinical outcomes of melanoma treatment.

As a student and research assistant in 2019, he led a Sydney team that claimed a in an international synthetic biology competition in Boston, with a project to synthesise a hallucination-inducing compound in mushrooms as a drug to treat depression.

Ali has opposed university efforts to define certain type of racism, including Islamophobia. ¡°These are universities, not dictionaries,¡± he on BlueSky. ¡°The only kind of prejudice I want explicitly defined in universities is anti-Fahadism, which refers to a failure to provide Fahad with tenure.¡±

51³Ô¹Ï attempted to contact Ali for comment. His X and LinkedIn accounts appear to have been deleted.?NSW Police contradicted a newspaper¡¯s that it was investigating his posts, saying police had received a complaint but not a formal report.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com