Leadership and community cohesion

Introduction to the thought leadership series

David Bass, Director of Inclusion and Governance, Advance HE

Across Advance HE’s global membership, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are operating in conditions of heightened pressure. Democratic norms are contested, trust in institutions is fragile, and global conflicts reverberate far beyond national borders. HEIs are shaped by these dynamics and often expected to hold together values that are themselves under strain: freedom of inquiry and expression, inclusion across difference, institutional autonomy, public accountability, and the confidence of the communities they serve.

These pressures are experienced daily on our campuses, in classrooms, labs, staff rooms and meetings, and in the decisions taken by senior leaders. Staff and students are not distant observers of conflicts, but people whose identities, families and histories are directly affected. As a result, HEIs increasingly function as microcosms of wider societal and geopolitical tensions — and what happens in Gaza, Tehran or Washington DC, or at Westminster, Holyrood or in the UK Supreme Court, reverberates through our institutions. Grief, fear, anger and moral urgency do not remain outside the campus gate; they are present in our institutions, shaping not only our study, work and research, but also perceptions of belonging, safety, legitimacy and trust, and it falls to institutional leaders to respond.

Senior leaders are required to make those decisions about speech, protest, inclusion, academic freedom and institutional response — often quickly, often under scrutiny, always with incomplete information — in contexts where the consequences are real and unevenly distributed. They are responsible for large, complex and societally vital institutions, with diverse communities in which power, vulnerability and voice are not equally shared. They carry institutional duties on free speech, academic freedom, equality and, must give careful consideration to their own approach to impartiality when speaking on contested topics. And they must lead not for the most vocal members of their communities, but for all of them. In such circumstances, leaders cannot rely on policy alone, nor defer responsibility indefinitely to process, consultation or silence. Decisions are unavoidable.

Institutional autonomy matters here, not to avoid scrutiny, but as the space in which responsible judgement must be exercised. Universities are entrusted with autonomy precisely because they are expected to balance competing these obligations with care and integrity. Executive leaders must

protect academic freedom and lawful speech while ensuring that campuses remain places where people can work, study and disagree without fear or intimidation.

Confidence in leadership does not come from eliminating tension, but from engaging it openly, within the law, with judgement and purpose — and without retreating into the false safety of equivocation.

The contributions that follow are offered in that spirit. Each reflects a willingness to think seriously, and publicly, about leadership under pressure. Each addresses different questions — antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, protest, academic freedom, dignity and belonging — but all are concerned with how institutions act when values collide and certainty is unavailable.

• Professor Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria University and incoming Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hull, and a scholar of the Holocaust and genocide, reflects on one of the most demanding terrains any UK institutional leader has had to navigate recently: antisemitism, campus protest, and the contested relationship between free speech and inclusion in the context of the Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, and how we update our decisions and assumptions following e.g. the Bondi Beach attack in Australia. (Read Tom Lawson's thought piece: October 7th, Israel / Palestine, antisemitism, protest and universities in the UK)
• Professor Osama Khan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Aston University and incoming Vice-Chancellor at the University of South Wales, writes with personal honesty about Islamophobia, human dignity and the lived experience of exclusion, while also leading an institution and insisting that academic freedom and free speech are not peripheral concerns, but integral to the same ethical landscape. (I am British. I am Bangladeshi. I am Muslim. I am a teacher. But above all, I am human.)
• Professor Dibyesh Anand, DVC at the University of Westminster, challenges institutional comfort more directly, arguing that inclusion requires not only celebration but difficult, intentional confrontation, and that freedom itself, including academic freedom and free speech, must be reclaimed as a condition of democratic and inclusive participation. Celebrate diversity, challenge prejudice, and embrace Academic Freedom as an Ally of EDI

Writing in this way is an act of leadership in its own right: reflective, exposed and accountable. These articles model how leaders can engage with disagreement and uncertainty without abandoning either institutional responsibility or human dignity.

The invitation to the reader is not to agree with everything that follows, but to think harder, and perhaps less comfortably, about the institution you help lead and the choices you are already making.