In turbulent times, universities must be led, not managed

IT is time to say this plainly: universities do not merely need better management—they need stronger leadership. The distinction is not semantic. It is existential. Across the world, higher education is being reshaped by a convergence of forces that are structural, simultaneous and unforgiving. Institutions that respond with incremental management routines will drift; those that exercise leadership will define the next era. Consider the scale of disruption. The sustainability transition is no longer a moral add-on; it is a systems challenge that touches curriculum, research priorities, campus operations and partnerships with industry. Universities are expected to decarbonize their estates, embed climate literacy across disciplines and produce solutions for energy, water and urban resilience. This is not a checklist to be “managed.” It requires a re-articulation of purpose—what the university is for, and how it mobilizes knowledge to serve society under planetary constraints. Layer onto this the digital and AI transformation. Artificial intelligence is not just another technology to be procured and deployed; it is a general-purpose capability that reconfigures pedagogy, assessment, research workflows and even the boundaries of academic integrity. Decisions about AI adoption are, at their core, decisions about epistemology—what counts as knowledge, how it is created and who is authorized to create it. Management can standardize platforms and policies; leadership must set direction, establish ethical guardrails and build institutional confidence to experiment at scale. Geopolitical uncertainty adds a third dimension. Funding streams are becoming more volatile, cross-border collaborations are increasingly conditioned by strategic considerations and the global circulation of students and scholars is subject to sudden shocks. Universities can no longer assume a stable operating environment. They must cultivate resilience—diversified revenue, robust partnerships and the ca