The story
History
Origins (1900-99)
Calls for the establishment of a national university in Australia began as early as 1900. After the location of the nation's capital, Canberra, was determined in 1908, land was set aside for a university at the foot of Black Mountain in the city designs by Walter Burley Griffin. Establishment of the ANU was prolonged by World War II but resumed with the creation of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction in 1942, ultimately leading to the passage of the Australian National University Act 1946 by the Chifley government on 1 August 1946.
A group of Australian scholars served as advisors, including Sir Howard Florey (co-developer of medicinal penicillin), Sir Mark Oliphant (a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project), and Sir Keith Hancock (the Chichele Professor of Economic History at Oxford). The group also included a New Zealander, Sir Raymond Firth (a professor of anthropology at LSE), who had earlier worked in Australia for some years. Economist Sir Douglas Copland was appointed as ANU's first Vice-Chancellor and former Prime Minister Stanley Bruce served as the first Chancellor. ANU was originally organised into four centres—the Research Schools of Physical Sciences, Social Sciences and Pacific Studies and the John Curtin School of Medical Research.
The first residents' hall, University House, was opened in 1954 for faculty members and postgraduate students. Mount Stromlo Observatory, established by the federal government in 1924, became part of ANU in 1957. The first locations of the ANU Library, the Menzies and the General Studies Library (in 19700 renamed the J.B. Chifley Library) buildings, opened in 1963. The Australian Forestry School, located in Canberra since 1927, was amalgamated by ANU in 1965.
Canberra University College (CUC) was the first institution of higher education in the national capital, having been established in 1929 and enrolling its first undergraduate pupils in 1930. Its founding was led by Chairman of the CUC Council Sir Robert Garran, one of the drafters of the Australian Constitution and the first Solicitor-General of Australia. CUC was affiliated with the University of Melbourne and its degrees were granted by that university. Academic leaders at CUC included historian Manning Clark, political scientist Finlay Crisp, poet A. D. Hope, and economist Heinz Arndt.
In 1960, CUC was integrated into ANU as the School of General Studies, initially with faculties in arts, economics, law and science. Faculties in Oriental studies and engineering were introduced later. Bruce Hall, the first residential college for undergraduates, opened in 1961.
The Canberra School of Music and the Canberra School of Art were combined by the Canberra Institute of the Arts Ordinance 1988 to form the Canberra Institute of the Arts, and amalgamated with the university as the ANU Institute of the Arts in 1992.
Modern era (2000-present)
ANU established its Medical School in 2002, after obtaining federal government approval in 2000.
On 18 January 2003, the Canberra bushfires largely destroyed the Mount Stromlo Observatory. ANU astronomers as of 2013 conducted research from the Siding Spring Observatory, which contains 10 telescopes including the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
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In February 2013, financial entrepreneur and ANU graduate Graham Tuckwell made the largest university donation in Australian history by giving $50 million to fund an undergraduate scholarship program at ANU.
ANU had funding and staff cuts in the School of Music in 2011–15 and in the School of Culture, History and Language in 2016. As of 2017 there were a range of global (governmental) endowments available for Arts and Social Sciences, designated only for ANU. Further, some courses were delivered online.
ANU's student activism led to its fossil fuel divestment campaign, which was as of 2014 one of the longest-running in the country. The decision of the ANU Council to divest from two fossil fuel companies in 2014 was criticised by senior members of the Abbott government, including Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey, and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, but defended by Vice Chancellor and ocean engineering expert Ian Young, who opined, "On divestment, it is clear we were in the right and played a truly national and international leadership role.... [W]e seem to have played a major role in a movement which now seems unstoppable. As of 2014 ANU held investments in major fossil fuel companies.
In 2017, Chinese hackers infiltrated the computers of Australian National University, potentially compromising national security research conducted at the university.
The following year, the university's problem securing its computers arose again. In June 2019, the university disclosed that a cyber actor had successfully breached its internal defenses in late 2018, gaining unauthorized access to 19 years of historical records. The compromised data contained sensitive staff and student information, including bank account numbers, tax file numbers, academic records, and passport details.
A survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2017 found that the ANU had the second-highest incidence of sexual assault and sexual harassment. 3.5 per cent of respondents from the ANU reported being sexually assaulted in 2016. In response, the ANU Women's Department launched the annual "August 1st" campaign and protest movement to pressure the university administration into reforming its sexual assault and sexual harassment policies. Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt apologised to victims of sexual assault and harassment.
The university's problems with sexual assault and harassment spiked thereafter, however. In national survey findings from the 2021 National Student Safety Survey, the university recorded the highest rate of sexual harassment (26.1%) and the second-highest rate of sexual assault (12.3%) among students since commencing study. These statistics contrasted with the national university markedly lower averages of approximately one in six students experiencing harassment, and one in 20 (5%) experiencing assault. The university faced public criticism and student-led protests regarding its institutional responses and historical handling of assault allegations. Nevertheless, in 2023, independent surveys and case studies highlighted instances where students reported filling out official ANU complaint forms following an assault--but never received a follow-up response from the university leadership. Additionally, the university faced scrutiny over data privacy failures within its internal networks. In June 2026, investigations revealed that spreadsheets detailing sensitive student disclosures—including full names, contact details, and explicit allegations of sexual assault and harassment—had been left visible to all staff and students logged into the university's Microsoft 365 cloud platform.
In late 2025, former ANU academic Dr. Richard Emory McGary Jr. was sentenced to six years in prison following a Supreme Court conviction for the sexual assault of an ANU student in 2016, and another woman in 2020. However, in September 2026, the Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal overturned the convictions related to the 2016 incident, ordering that he would not face a retrial on those specific charges while leaving open a potential retrial for the 2020 allegations.
In July 2026, ANU leadership issued a formal apology during public hearings for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion regarding its handling of campus protests. Interim Vice-Chancellor Rebekah Brown acknowledged that ANU failed to protect the psychological and psychosocial safety of Jewish staff and students during a pro-Palestinian encampment on the Canberra campus. The encampment, established on April 29, 2024, and disbanded in mid-August 2024, operated for 110 days, making it the longest-running campus encampment in Australia. An internal workplace safety review finalized by the university in October 2024 had previously determined that the direct and residual psychosocial risks associated with the encampment were "high," leaving Jewish students feeling isolated and unable to fully participate in campus life. During the Royal Commission, witnesses detailed how Jewish community members were subjected to targeted harassment, including being spat on and labeled as "baby killers" or "genocide supporters." Student testimonies revealed that the hostile environment forced some individuals to conceal their Jewish identity and heritage out of fear for their physical safety. Acting Provost Joan Leach conceded that the university adopted a passive, "light-touch" approach to the protest, admitting that administrative action was significantly delayed.
In June 2026, during a Parliamentary Senate estimates hearing, interim Vice-Chancellor Rebekah Brown revealed that a series of continuous high-profile leadership scandals and executive failures had cost the university an estimated $100 million in reputational damage. The university's internal modeling indicated that the ongoing controversies had negatively impacted long-term international student recruitment pipelines and caused multiple major philanthropic donors to freeze or withdraw funding from the university.
2018 network compromise
The network of the university was subject to serious compromise from 9 November to 21 December 2018. ABC News reported that the initial breach occurred when a phishing message was previewed. After investigating, the university published a report on the incident. Cyber safety recommendations are generally applicable.
2023 campus attack
In September 2023, Alex Ophel (a 24-year-old ex-student) stabbed two 20-year-old female students at the university's Fellows Oval, leaving one with critical, life-threatening injuries, and struck a male student on the head with a frying pan. Ophel had a documented history of campus violence; in 2017, he had attacked an ANU statistics tutor and several classmates with a baseball bat.
ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop later called for the Australian Capital Territory government to explain why the university was not informed of the risk beforehand.
From Wikipedia’s article on Australian National University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3