Committee chair and Labor Senator Tony Sheldon called for the inquiry in January. Picture: Martin Ollman
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA) revealed four universities are being investigated for their handling of protests and encampments at the first Quality of governance public hearing.
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Incoming Office for Students chair Edward Peck would have expected that many of the questions he would face at his pre-appointment Education Committee hearing would concern the precarious financial situations that are the reality at many higher education institutions.
His answer to this line of inquiry was instructive. As a part of an urgent briefing with the current chief executive he would want to know:
the extent to which those universities have done all the things you do as an organisation when you face financial pressures. There are five or six things that you routinely do. To what extent have they been done by those organisations? To what extent is the financial pressure they are facing particularly acute because they have not yet got through all the cost reduction measures that would have enabled them to balance income with expenditure?
To many with an interest in universities – as places to study, as employers, as local anchor institutions – this idea of “five or six things” would have been confusing and opaque. Is there really a commonly understood playbook for institutions facing financial peril? If there is, why would there be any doubt as to whether senior leaders were following these well-worn tracks to safety? If there genuinely is a pre-packaged solution to universities running out of money, why do so many find themselves in precarious financial situations?
It would help to take each of these “five or six things” (I’m going to go with five) in turn.
If your university is smaller than expected in terms of students or income this year, the chances are it has been this size before.
The sector has grown enormously over the last few years, and the way that funding incentives currently work (both in terms of boom and bust in international recruitment, and the demise – in England – of the old HEFCE tolerance band) has meant that the expansion needed to teach more students, run more estate, or conduct more research has had to happen quickly – taking action when the money and need is there, rather than as a part of a long term plan.
Piecemeal expansion suffers when compared against strategic growth in that the kinds of efficiencies that a more considered approach offers are simply not available. Planned growth allows you to build capacity in a strategic way, in ways that take into account the wider pressures the institution is facing, the direction it wants to head, or plans for long term sustainability.
Often senior leaders look back to the resources needed in previous years for a similar cohort or workload in determining costs at a subject area or service level of granularity. If we could teach x undergraduates with y academic staff and z additional resources in 2015–16, why do we need more now? – that’s the question.
It’s a fair question – but it is a starting point, not a fully formed strategic plan for change. You may need more resources because there is more or different work to do – perhaps your current crop of academics are bringing in research contracts that need specialist support, perhaps the module choices available to undergraduates are more expansive, perhaps the students you are currently recruiting have different support needs. There’s any number of reasons why 2024-25 is not a repeat of 2015-16, and the act of comparison is the start of the conversation that might help unpack some of these a bit.
Imagine that at your university the last few rounds of the national student survey have seen students increasingly bring up the issue of a lack of library capacity as a problem. In response, the initial plan was to increase this capacity – an extension to the existing building paid for with borrowing, refurbishment and update of the rest of the building, and more money for digital resources.
A sound plan, but three years of lower than expected recruitment, declining income elsewhere, and an increased cost of doing business (construction costs are way up, for example) mean that the idea of putting the plan into action is keeping the director of finance up at night. It may be a necessary improvement, but it is no longer affordable.
In other words some or all of this valuable work isn’t going to happen this year, as things stand. One decision might be to redesign the project – perhaps covering some of the refurbishment and the content subscriptions but not the new build (and thus not the new borrowing). Even these elements would still have a cost, and with no new finance this would be coming out of recurrent funds. And there’s not as much available as there used to be.
So the other end of this point is reprofiling existing debt. For even a moderately leveraged university the repayment of capital and interest (under 6 per cent is pretty decent for new borrowing these days) takes up a fair chunk of available recurrent funding each year. If you are able to renegotiate your repayments – extending the loan term perhaps, or offering additional covenants, or both – this frees up recurrent funding to meet other needs.
Both of these solutions are temporary ones – one day that library will need sorting out, and paying less of your loan back now inevitably means paying more back later. But sometimes suboptimal solutions are all that are available.
There may well be cases where the same thing is being done in multiple ways, by multiple teams, across a single institution. There might be benefits in every faculty having an admissions team and a research manager, but in a time of financial constraint you have to ask whether a central team might be more efficient – and whether this efficiency is more important than the benefits being realised from the current configuration.
Again – the calculus here differs from institution to institution. Where faculty autonomy is the norm, it may be that benefits are being realised that the centre doesn’t know exist, much less understand. As I am sure is becoming increasingly clear, questions like these are the start of a conversation – not the end. Even if in bald resource terms centralisation is a saving, you may not be taking all of the variables into account.
Conversely, where there are clear savings and no meaningful reduction in benefits you are still entering into a course of action that could prove hugely disruptive to individual staff members. For some, your plan may represent a long hoped for chance for progression or role redesign – for others it may be the push that means that their years of experience are lost to the university as they retire or move to another role. With campus redundancies in the news each week, staff are rightly suspicious of change – bringing people along with new structures requires a huge investment of time and effort in communication, consultation, and flexibility.
There are many, many more effective ways to run a surplus than being a university. The converse of this is that people who run universities probably have non-financial reasons to want to run universities rather than running something else. In some of the wilder us-versus-them framings of campus industrial relations we can lose sight of the fact that pretty much everyone involved wants a university to keep on being a university, despite the benefits that would come alongside a sudden pivot into, say, rare earth metal extraction or marketing generative AI.
That’s an admittedly flippant expression of something that is often forgotten in university strategising. We all have our reasons to be there. Expressing these is often the start of understanding which are the things a particular university does that are non-negotiably essential, and which are the things we do that are either generating income to subsidise these, or facilitating these things being done.
If there is something that a university is doing that is non-essential, is not helping essential activity to get done, and it is not generating income to subsidise the things that are essential, why is it being done at all?
Of course, this presupposes that everyone agrees on what activity fits into each category. Even posing the question can be painful. Once again, we are at the very beginning of a journey that probably took up a large part of governance and management meetings over the past few years.
A couple of years ago, my party trick at conferences involving senior university staff was to show them my “fake subject TEF”. Confronted with a by subject analysis of student progression and satisfaction at their own provider, many of the staff I talked to would give me a similar answer – and it started “ah, I know why that is…”
The problems our universities face are already known to those who work there. External datapoints only confirm things that are pretty well understood, and usually confirm an instinct to act on them sooner rather than later – a reason why OfS investigations have tended to find the smoking guns already put beyond use by the time they get on campus.
If the problems within your institution are less obvious, a well-judged comparison with a competitor could help make things clear. A lot of the data you might want to play with is closely guarded, but there are ways in which you might use HESA’s public data to make a start (my tips – Student table 37, Staff table 11, Finance table 8). Otherwise, your staff will have a rich experience of working at other universities – what are the key differences. What is special about the way your place does things – and are there ways you can learn from the way things are done elsewhere.
If you are a university governor hoping for the mythical playbook, I can only apologise. If there was an easy way to make university books balance, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
What is on offer is the hard choices and difficult conversations that will very often lead to arguments, mistrust, and conspiracy theories. At boards and councils up and down the UK, variations on the above conversations are at the root of everything you feel is going wrong on campus.
You’ll be learning just how good your senior executive and governors actually are at running large, complex, beautiful organisations like universities. Parts of the university you may never have given a second thought to – the planning team, the finance department, the data analysis directorate, internal audit, procurement – will be coming up with ever more ingenious ways to make savings while preserving the university as a whole.
Among the universities being investigated are both public and private institutions that include Clemson University, Cornell University, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Kentucky.
An article from the Courier Journal reported that University of Kentucky spokesperson Lindsey Piercy said, “We have not received any official notification of this review. However, the university complies with both the constitution and Title VI. Our graduate programs are open to all qualified applicants. We will continue to monitor and review this issue, cooperate with any official inquiries and, as always, comply with the law.”
Montana State University-Bozeman (MSU) is also among the 45 institutions under investigation. MSU vice president for communications Tracy Ellig released a statement which reads in part: “MSU strictly adheres to all federal and state laws in the hiring of its faculty and staff. … Montana State University strictly adheres to all applicable laws with regard to its students. MSU has well-established processes and procedures in place to investigate any claim of discrimination by students, faculty, staff or the public.”
The ED press release noted that the investigations were prompted by these institutions having partnered with The PhD Project, an organization founded in 1994 with the goal of creating more role models leading business classrooms. It endeavors to improve diversity in the business world by encouraging people from underrepresented backgrounds to attain doctoral degrees in business. ED asserted that The PhD Project “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”
The PhD Project issued the following statement: “For the last 30 years, The PhD Project has worked to expand the pool of workplace talent by developing business school faculty who inspire, mentor, and support tomorrow’s leaders. Our vision is to create a broader talent pipeline of current and future business leaders who are committed to excellence and to each other, through networking, mentorship, and unique events. This year, we have opened our membership application to anyone who shares that vision. The PhD Project was founded with the goal of providing more role models in the front of business classrooms, which remains our goal today.”
OCR is also investigating six universities that have allegedly awarded race-based scholarships, which it asserts is not allowed, and one university that allegedly administers a program that “segregates students on the basis of race.” Among those schools are Grand Valley State University, Ithaca College and the University of Tulsa School of Medicine.
“The Department is working to reorient civil rights enforcement to ensure all students are protected from illegal discrimination,” noted U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudiced by the color of their skin.”
Kelly Benjamin, media and communications strategist for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), noted that AAUP was a plaintiff in a case for which the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland has granted a preliminary nationwide injunction on parts of two executive orders issued by President Donald J. Trump that sought to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs among federal government grantees and contractors, which includes most colleges and universities.
“Unfortunately, the Office of Civil Rights within the Education Department has…intensified the clamp down on speech and expression related to race and identity, and they’ve moved beyond censorship into a true weaponization of federal civil rights law,” said Benjamin. “It’s fundamentally at odds with what the mission of higher education should be, which is the search for knowledge that serves the common good.
“They’re trying to remake higher education into their own agenda, where they can control not only who has access to higher education but what is taught in the classroom, what can be researched, what can be written about,” he added. “It’s an assault on the very core mission of higher education.”
The defendants, which include President Trump and ED, filed for a stay of the injunction pending appeal, which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted. “Having reviewed the record, the district court’s opinion, and the parties’ briefing, we agree with the government that it has satisfied the factors for a stay under Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 426 (2009).” Entered at the direction of Chief Judge Albert Diaz, with the concurrence of Judge Pamela Harris and Judge Allison Rushing.
EdTrust issued a statement from Augustus Mays, vice president of partnerships and engagement, condemning the investigations. He noted: “By using federal investigations as a weapon to intimidate institutions committed to racial equity, the Trump administration is not only undermining the fundamental mission of higher education but is also jeopardizing student success. These attacks are grounded in a false narrative that DEI initiatives are about exclusion. The reality is the opposite: these programs are designed to expand access, increase opportunity, and strengthen institutions by ensuring that all students, particularly underserved students, can thrive.”
I was recently browsing Board Game Geek, an online forum for nerds who like tabletop games, and came across a thread entitled “anyone have a use for the University?”
This contained a complaint about the board game Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, although the University is potentially a very powerful card, it’s considered too expensive and therefore not worth players’ investment – and I couldn’t help being struck by a resonance with real life higher education in the UK.
Following the recent increase in tuition fees, reports of students perceiving university education as a poor investment of time and money have proliferated. As such, understanding and communicating the value of higher education has become an increasingly pressing concern.
In 2024, over 1,000 papers were published which mention the value of higher education, going over themes like economic gain, professional and academic experience, networking, “cultural capital”, and a sense of the value that higher education institutions offer to society in general. Authors explore how value is perceived differently by applicants, students, graduates, staff and the public, and by different demographic communities within these groups. Undoubtedly, the value of higher education is multifaceted and complex.
A powerful way of understanding value is through metaphor. When we use a metaphor, we ascribe the value of one thing to another. For instance, universities are beacons of knowledge positions universities as guiding lights, illuminating the path to progress (or something).
Some common metaphors ascribed to universities include: universities are innovators that drive progress and create new ideas; universities are catalysts for personal and societal transformation; and universities are providers which supply a skilled workforce to deliver economic growth.
When metaphors are layered together, they become a narrative – a way of conveying greater meaning through interconnected symbols. Games, as a form of interactive storytelling, take this concept even further. They combine metaphors with player agency, allowing players to actively engage with and shape the narrative. In games, players don’t just passively observe metaphors at work; they inhabit and interact with them.
Because games are dynamic, this means that universities appear in games only when they are actively doing something: acting on the simulation and changing the outcome for the player. Analysing these dynamics leads to some thought-provoking insights into how universities are perceived as acting on the real world, and therefore what value higher education holds in society.
Our most familiar metaphors for universities are easily recognisable in games. For example, in strategy games such as Age of Empires, universities are innovators which generate “research points” which can be spent to unlock new things. In city-building games like Megapolis, universities are providers that give the player more resources in the form of workers. In Cities: Skylines, universities are catalysts for growth: once a citizen has attended university their home will be upgraded to higher building levels, and they can get better jobs, which in turn levels up their place of employment.
To return to Puerto Rico: in the normal rules of the board game, players can “construct” a building (such as a factory or warehouse) but cannot use it until the next “mayor phase” is triggered, at which point they can be “staffed”, and its benefits can be used by the player thereafter. The university card grants the player the ability to both “construct” and “staff” new buildings instantly, without waiting. This significantly speeds up the gameplay for the owner of the card.
When used in this way, the university card changes the mechanics of the game for the player who can use it.
Puerto Rico is not alone in this. For example, in Struggle for Catan, the university card allows the possessor to buy future cards more easily by swapping one required resource for any other kind. This has such an unbalancing effect that it changes the game from that point onwards. As one Board Game Geek user puts it:
When I play with my wife we ban the University to keep it a friendly game […] In a four player game everyone just gangs up on whoever gets the University.
In both of these games, universities are cheat codes: “a secret password […] that makes something unusual happen, for example giving a player unusual abilities or allowing them to advance in the game.”
Cheat codes are used by players to create exceptions to the standard game rules everyone else must abide by. Universities change the mechanics of the game and enable players to act in a way that would be otherwise impossible.
The idea of students using universities to gain an advantage is not new. When university strategies talk about “transforming students’ lives”, this is generally what they’re referring to. “Educational gain”, “cultural capital”, “graduate attributes”, and “personal development”, are all facets of the same sort of idea.
However, I’d argue that using the metaphor of a “cheat code” forces us to see students as active players who are using their experiences agentically and strategically, rather than just passively receiving something. When a player uses a cheat code, they generally have an intention in mind. Using the game metaphor reminds us to see students as individual players, who are interested in developing their own palette of cheat codes for their own personal goals.
If the value of a university experience for students is in developing and testing cheat codes, then we should be intentionally structuring higher education to teach the most effective “hacks”. As Mark Peace has argued on this site in the past, we mustn’t be complacent about the process by which students “catch” transferrable skills. We need to be much more intentional about how we scaffold the development of these cheat codes, and how we work collaboratively with students to identify the skills they want to build and create meaningful ways to help them develop their own toolbox of cheat codes.
Without this, there is a real danger that we will return to the original scenario of this article, the forum post bemoaning the high-cost, low-return of the university card in Puerto Rico. We must guard against the “university card” being almost unplayable, because it is too expensive, not flexible enough, or too dated. The challenge to institutions is to ensure our provision is more like the university card in Struggle for Catan: truly game-breaking.
Thinking about universities in terms of game design invites us to rethink the rules we’re playing by and imagine a world where some rules don’t apply. It’s a reminder that the narratives that shape higher education aren’t set in stone. Players have autonomy and can change the direction of the game. This might mean building a toolbox for life with students – and for us, it means taking a wider look at the system we’re part of. What would it look like to recover our agency and, as Edward Venning puts it on HEPI recently, “recover an assertive self-confidence”? For too long, universities have been stuck playing the game instead of changing the rules.
There are a lot of transnational associations of universities out there. Some are meant to advance specific political goals, like the European Universities Association. Others exist simply to support their members without engaging in lobbying or political work, such as the African Association of Universities, whose former president, Ernest Aryeetey, was a guest on the show last year.
But the oldest of all these associations is the International Association of Universities (IAU), based in Paris and created by UNESCO in 1950. I had the pleasure of attending their annual meeting in Tokyo last November—a unique opportunity to see global higher education, in all its glorious diversity, reflected in a single room.
While I was there, I asked their Secretary-General, Hilligje Van’t Land, to join us on the show. Graciously, she agreed, leading to today’s podcast.
My chat with Hilligje revolved mainly around two issues. First, the state of global higher education—spoiler: it’s been better. And second, the challenges of maintaining an association across a membership spanning over 100 countries.
How do you keep an organization relevant across institutions with such different capacity levels, facing such different problems in vastly different external environments? And at the global level, can universities even be considered a single community?
Hilligje, who has one of the most interesting vantage points in global higher education, brings sharp insights to these big questions. And so, without further ado, let’s turn it over to Hilligje.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 3.23 | Connecting Universities in a Divided World: International Association of Universities’ Mission
Alex Usher (AU): Hilligje, I’m not sure all our viewers, listeners, or readers are familiar with the history of the International Association of Universities. I know it was founded in 1950, but how has it evolved since then? And what does your membership look like geographically?
Hilligje Van’t Land (HVL): Yes, well, my name is indeed HVL, and I’m the Secretary-General of this wonderful organization, the International Association of Universities.
As you mentioned, it was founded in 1950 under the auspices of UNESCO, and its secretariat is based in Paris. I point that out because it’s one of the most common questions I get—where are you based?
At the same time, we represent a truly global higher education community, with universities from 130 countries across five continents.
How has it evolved over time? In the beginning, the association was largely led by universities from the Global North, working to rebuild the world after World War II on a foundation of shared values—values that would help create peace among people through higher education. And today, that vision still underpins much of what we do. Our goal is to bring together voices from around the world to collaboratively shape a collective vision of what universities can stand for, ultimately helping societies develop toward something better.
So what does our membership look like? We have 600 engaged members who contribute financially to the association, and it’s an incredibly diverse group of universities spanning all five continents. That diversity is central to our mission—not just representing one group, but bringing together many perspectives.
AU: We often think of university associations in terms of rectors’ conferences, where their primary job is to lobby—whether at a national level or through organizations like the European Universities Association. The International Association of Universities (IAU) obviously doesn’t have that kind of function. So is it more about universities speaking to each other? What exactly is its role in the global higher education ecosystem? Who is it speaking to beyond just its membership?
HVL: That’s a very good question—sorry if my English stumbles sometimes!
Indeed, we are a truly global association of universities, but without a specific regional or local resonance. For example, the European Universities Association engages with the European Commission, the Arab Association of Universities works closely with ministries across the Arab world, and American universities are involved in national-level associations that influence policy, like the Association of American Universities (AAU). In Africa, university associations work closely with the African Union.
Our role is to bring these voices together, encouraging universities to collaborate globally in ways that contribute to transforming the world. From where we sit, we advocate to the United Nations and UNESCO, influencing policy decisions within global agenda-setting bodies affiliated with UNESCO.
Right now, we are approaching the end of the UN Agenda 2030. A new global agenda will have to be developed because we are far from achieving the current goals. Yet, those goals have played a crucial role in bringing universities together around essential topics. As we look ahead, universities worldwide will help shape this next agenda, ensuring higher education continues to be a key driver of global progress.
AU: One thing that struck me when I attended your meeting in Tokyo last November—an amazing gathering, by the way—was how difficult it must be to create an institutional agenda that speaks to universities from such different parts of the world. How can I put it? Institutions in Australia, Indonesia, and Somalia—where I think you even had a delegate from Somaliland—are all dealing with vastly different domestic challenges. Given that universities are so deeply embedded in their national contexts, how do you find themes that resonate across all of them? How do you create a common agenda that works for everyone?
HVL: It’s both a challenge and an opportunity, Alex.
When institutions are deeply embedded in their national dynamics, it can be difficult to see beyond them. But without looking outward, how can they truly make the case for what they do? Staying in an echo chamber or only engaging in national-level discussions limits the ability to develop informed policies. That’s why bringing in diverse voices from the global higher education community is so important—it enriches conversations at institutional, national, and regional levels.
The agenda we co-develop with our board is then put to the IAU membership every four years for discussion at the global level. Are these the right topics to focus on? Yes or no? From there, a strategy is developed, and universities engage by seizing opportunities for responsible and meaningful internationalization.
For example, universities rally around themes like fair and inclusive leadership, the role of higher education in sustainable development, and, since COVID, the global conversation on digital transformation in higher education. A major focus now is open science and AI—how do these shape the future of universities?
And while institutions may come from Somaliland, Ghana, Colombia, Reykjavik, or Paris, they often grapple with similar questions. University rectors and policymakers worldwide are asking themselves the same things. By facilitating global leadership meetings, we create spaces where these shared concerns resonate and where new perspectives can emerge.
AU: You’ve mentioned the three big areas that IAU works in—sustainability, internationalization, and digital transformation. You also have those large surveys and studies that go out every couple of years. How do you engage institutions in these areas? What are universities doing in each of these three areas with IAU, and what are they getting out of it?
HVL: Fair and inclusive internationalization—one of the key topics that resonates strongly, even within the name International Association of Universities—translates into at least 10 different ways for universities to engage.
For example, just yesterday, we hosted a webinar on what responsible internationalization means today. Does it mean closing borders and fencing off countries that are perceived as threats to our intellectual work? Or, on the contrary, is responsible internationalization an opportunity to connect universities globally around key topics and foster international research collaborations? These collaborations are critical for addressing global challenges like climate change and crises in their many forms.
So, these discussions are one way we engage institutions. We also offer a service called HEIAS (Higher Education Internationalization Strategies Advisory Service), which helps universities refine their internationalization approaches.
Additionally, we maintain a network of internationalization associations, including NAFSA in the U.S., EAIE in Europe, and the African Association for Internationalization. By bringing these voices together, we co-develop statements that universities can adopt, ensuring that key topics remain at the forefront of global discussions.
On sustainability, we created the Global Cluster on Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development. This initiative invites universities worldwide to champion specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while ensuring their projects remain interconnected. The goal is not to work in silos but to collaborate and co-create solutions to pressing challenges—whether water issues, gender inequality, or unsustainable urban development.
These efforts lead to research projects, joint initiatives, and meaningful impact across the global higher education community.
AU: Hilligje, you held that meeting in Tokyo last November, which I mentioned earlier. What do you think were some of the main takeaways from that event? What did you learn about how universities are coping with the challenges of the 2020s?
HVL: The 2020s—universities are coping with everything that comes their way, I would say.
One of the major takeaways was something you might not expect: the theme itself—University Values for the Future in a Changing World. When planning the conference, we had many discussions with the program committee. People said, We need to talk about AI. We need to talk about sustainability. We have to discuss the financial sustainability of universities because that’s what institutions are struggling with.
And I said—many organizations are already tackling these topics specifically. Let’s focus on values. Where do values stand today? What values do we need to cultivate to build a meaningful, impactful higher education system for the future?
As you saw at the conference, we had an unusually large group of university leaders attending—more than in previous years. We brought together leadership from universities worldwide to discuss the values they stand for, each from their own unique perspectives.
What this told me is that IAU has a unique opportunity to rally around topics that other organizations aren’t addressing. And these conversations are essential.
We received a lot of feedback—messages and even letters—from participants saying these discussions were eye-opening. They allowed universities to develop new collaborations, whether by inviting each other to campuses or by looking at institutional challenges through a different lens.
So the key takeaway? These conversations are crucial if we want to shape the future of higher education differently. Of course, IAU will continue to address the pressing issues on universities’ daily agendas, but leaders are also craving more space for these deeper discussions—discussions that are vital yet often overlooked.
AU: At the meeting, one session in particular stood out to me—the one led by Fanta Aw from NAFSA in the United States. A lot of participants from North America, Australia, and other OECD countries came in very concerned about university values, feeling that they were under threat. This was just a week or two after the U.S. elections, so people were thinking about issues like that, as well as the rise of movements like Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and what these political shifts could mean for universities.
What struck me, though, was the response from universities in other parts of the world—particularly in Asia and Africa. It wasn’t outright pushback, but more of a gentle chiding. Their message was, We live with these challenges all the time. From IAU’s perspective, that’s just another example of how institutions come from vastly different contexts. How do you bridge these experiences within IAU? How do you ensure that both perspectives are heard?
HVL: Well, those perspectives were very much present on that panel, and the discussion continued long after the session ended.
It’s important to recognize that these challenges aren’t confined to a single region or a divide between so-called “developed” and “developing” countries. In fact, I’d like to discard that terminology altogether—many of the countries we traditionally label as developing have advanced in ways that often surpass others.
The key takeaway is that these conversations are essential. Just because one university or country is newly experiencing pressures from policymakers, threats to academic freedom, or restrictions on institutional autonomy doesn’t mean these issues are new globally. For some institutions, this is an everyday reality.
But these challenges must be debated openly. If the future of higher education is one without institutional autonomy and academic freedom, what kind of education system are we building? What happens if governments dictate which topics can be discussed on campus, replace rectors at will, or shut down academic departments based on political agendas?
These issues need to be confronted head-on. From these discussions, the conversation must be taken further—to the United Nations, to UNESCO policymaking forums, and to global decision-makers. If we don’t address them now, the future could be even bleaker than it already appears in many parts of the world.
AU: A couple of weeks ago, we had American author Ben Wildavsky on the show. Of course, he wrote The Great Brain Race 15 years ago, and we invited him to discuss that book because it presented such an optimistic view of higher education—one where globalization would bring everyone closer together.
But looking around the world today, I find myself questioning the future of globalization and internationalization. IAU is deeply tied to a version of internationalization—maybe not the one Ben was promoting, but still a vision of global academic collaboration. If globalization really does roll back over the next four or five years, what do you see as IAU’s role?
HVL: Globalization is a complex phenomenon, with many facets—and it’s often questioned because it brings challenges alongside opportunities. Increasingly, it also comes with fear.
What IAU fosters, however, is global cooperation. Cooperation starts at the institutional level, extends to national and regional levels, and then reaches the global stage. But cooperation is never a given—it must be nurtured carefully, strategically, and consistently.
Just yesterday, during our Futures of Higher Education webinar series—which now includes 75 recorded sessions available on our website—we hosted Ayesha Maikundi, the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja. She was asked about responsible internationalization and what globalization means today.
She raised an important point: We send the best and brightest into the world, but they rarely come back. Some return as expats, contributing to higher education in their home countries occasionally, but not in a sustained way. The challenge of brain drain remains significant.
While brain gain and brain circulation are often discussed—though, of course, brains don’t literally circulate on their own—the real issue is ensuring meaningful global academic connections. Different models have been used over time, but we need to continuously rethink how we facilitate these exchanges.
For example, not every system is easy to engage with—Nigeria, as Ayesha noted, presents logistical challenges. But beyond that, there are many places around the world that remain overlooked, not because they lack value, but because we fail to recognize them as worthy academic destinations.
That’s why global collaboration and mobility must be continuously worked on—strategically, deliberately, and persistently—to strengthen the international higher education ecosystem.
AU: Beyond issues like globalization and state intrusion into university decision-making, from your vantage point, what are the other major trends shaping higher education globally today? Are we seeing a convergence of concerns at the university level? In other words, are institutions becoming more similar—more isomorphic, so to speak? Or, at a global level, are we seeing more diversification among institutions?
HVL: Universities are institutions with many, many faces.
There are certainly harmonization processes underway in different parts of the world. In Europe, for instance, you have the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process, along with ministerial meetings aimed at creating greater alignment among institutions.
But the goal isn’t to make every university the same. In Europe, the aim is to embrace diversity while fostering better dialogue and collaboration across institutions. A similar trend is slowly emerging in Asia as well.
Now, if you look at the United States—it’s technically one country, but in reality, it has so many states, so many systems, and so many different kinds of universities within those systems. That diversity is significant.
This is why, right from IAU’s founding in 1950, we began developing the World Higher Education Database. At the time, it included just 50 universities. Today, we track and document over 21,000 institutions worldwide, mapping entire higher education systems in order to foster better understanding and appreciation of their differences.
In the end, this work also feeds into UNESCO’s Global Convention on the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications, which aims to improve system compatibility. Harmonization is important in the sense that it allows students and scholars to navigate different systems more easily and become true global citizens.
If systems are entirely disconnected—with different academic calendars, study periods, and structures—it creates barriers. So yes, harmonization is happening, but there is no one-size-fits-all model. Universities will remain distinct, and that’s the beauty of it.
AU: So, maintaining harmonization while preserving diversity—that could be one of the major global trends over the next 15 to 20 years. How do you see IAU evolving over the next 10 to 15 years as sustainability, internationalization, and digital transformation continue to accelerate? Will you stick with these three focus areas, or do you anticipate new priorities emerging? And will new ways for institutions to collaborate globally develop as well?
HVL: I’m convinced that this will remain a movable feast, to borrow a phrase—because universities are never static. Their interests and priorities evolve over time.
We host International Conferences annually, but every four years, we hold a General Conference where we elect a new board and bring together the global higher education community to define our next strategic plan.
Right now, we have four priority areas—though leadership is a major focus as well. These priorities may shift over time, as they have in the past. While the core mission remains, new challenges continue to emerge.
For instance, we need to address the massification of higher education, as more people around the world seek university degrees. We must also consider the commodification of higher education, which is becoming an increasing concern. At the same time, there is a strong push for skills-based education, which we try to balance by advocating for the continued importance of the humanities.
Another tension that remains unresolved is collaboration versus competition—how universities navigate national interests while engaging in global partnerships. The rise of digital education also raises new questions about what it means to be a university in a rapidly changing world.
In terms of IAU’s membership, we currently have 600 institutions that financially support our vision and mission. But many more universities align with our values and participate in our initiatives.
Looking ahead 10 years, where do I see IAU? Well, in an ideal world, I’d love to see 21,000 universities as members—creating a truly global dialogue, not just about the future of higher education, but about how universities shape society itself.
Because ultimately, we’re not just looking inward—we’re asking what universities contribute to the world.
AU: Hilligje, thank you so much for joining us today.
HVL: You’re welcome.AU: And before we wrap up, I’d like to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, as well as you—our viewers, readers, and listeners—for tuning in. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, please reach out to us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education. Join us next week when our guest will be Dendev Badarch, a professor at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. He’ll be with us to discuss the future of higher education in Mongolia. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.
TEQSA chief executive Mary Russell will appear at the inquiry on Wednesday. Picture: Newswire
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA) will on Wednesday tell the Education and Employment Legislation Committee it needs increased authority to efficiently wrangle universities.
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It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but in general commuter students (whatever definition you are using) tend to be those who lived locally before they became students.
It’s an intersection – if you are recruiting locally (upskilling your local area) you are most likely to be recruiting students who are already living in the local area and will choose something other than the traditional on campus experience.
As institutional recruitment strategies change over the years, so will the makeup of your student body. Policy pressures, and – frankly – the need to reach underserved groups for more pragmatic financial reasons mean that more people are able to consider higher education in some form.
This is going to include stuff like sub-degree qualifications, provision aimed at mature students who want to upskill or re-skill mid-career, and more vocational qualifications that link in to the needs of particular local employers.
There’s been various research reports (most notably from the Sutton Trust) that have used custom slices of HESA or UCAS data to identify commuter students. Until now it’s been quite difficult to replicate these analyses with public data, but the invention of HESA student table 62 and some nifty spatial updates from the good people at Tableau allows us to get fairly sophisticated with public data.
Here I’ve allowed you to make your own determination of what constitutes a local student based on the number of miles from your university’s main campus – you can select a provider of interest with the filter at the top, and then zero in on modes and levels of study of interest.
The map will show you which local authorities are in scope (marked in pink) – the students that hail from those pink areas are shown in the bar chart at the side for each year, and the proportion of all students (at that provider with the level and mode as selected) is marked on the bars.
It’s far from perfect – one particular issue comes with the use of local authorities (as of late 2023, local democracy fans) as the unit of analysis. Because I can’t tell you where in, say, Somerset, a particular student lives we have to use the distance from the central point of the local authority in question. This is fine for your smaller council areas, but for big rural districts it causes problems.
Another issue will be the population of each area. There’s loads of potential students in Birmingham or London, perhaps less in Northumberland or Devon. If your main campus is nearer the former than the latter, your figures are going to be flattered.
If local students aren’t going to your provider, where are they going? I have a chart for that too – select your local authority district at the top, and the rest of the controls work as normal. In general local students do study locally – but there are exceptions.
So – which providers have a low proportion of students from their local area? If you look at full time undergraduate recruitments the winners tend to (as above) be London-based or northern civic universities with strong links to the local area. Bath (especially, with two providers represented at the bottom end) and the wider south west are more likely to see students leave the area to study, and specialist providers are less likely to recruit locally than larger providers offering more courses in more areas.
Though a first thought might see commuter students (and local recruitment) as an issue that doesn’t figure in the plans of our more prestigious providers, the reality is complex and pays no heed to your REF results. There are areas of the country where people tend to study locally – there are providers that are particularly good at recruiting what are likely to be their own recently qualified undergraduates on to masters courses. And large cities like London and Birmingham have their own specific gravity. In other words you almost certainly have students who commute – and thus have a very different experience of higher education to their peers – at your provider. And you need to offer them support.
This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.
The ASEAN Universities Exhibition and Forum 2025 (AEF2025), held in Kuala Lumpur, brought together regional stakeholders to enhance higher education collaboration and foster meaningful partnerships.
Attendees were addressed by Novie Tajuddin, CEO of Education Malaysia Global Services (EMGS), who reinforced Asia’s position as a rising contender set to challenge the traditional ‘big four’ study destinations.
With over 90 exhibitors in attendance – including from universities from Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Timor-Leste – Tajuddin stressed the importance of working together to ensure Asian institutions thrive on the world stage.
In January 2025, Malaysia took over the rotating ASEAN chairmanship. Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir, Malaysia’s minister of higher education, said the country’s role is clear – “to serve as a bridge between ASEAN universities, governments, and industries, ensuring that education remains at the core of regional progress”.
Speaking at the event, Zambry, a former international student himself, outlined his vision for Malaysia and the wider region, emphasising the importance of digital transformation and the integration of AI as the higher education landscape evolves.
His vision prioritises continuous upskilling, a sustainable and inclusive education system, and stronger industry-academic collaboration to equip graduates for the evolving global landscape.
“Over the past decades, ASEAN universities have gained global recognition. Institutions in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia are now ranked among the best, with others making significant strides in catching up,” he said.
“Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are establishing themselves as higher education hubs, attracting students from across the region and beyond. ASEAN universities are producing world-class research in science, technology, business, and the humanities, offering localised solutions to global challenges.”
We must work together to ensure that ASEAN universities remain competitive amidst the rise of global education giants
Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir, Malaysia’s minister of higher education
“While this progress is commendable, we must work together to ensure that ASEAN universities remain competitive amidst the rise of global education giants,” the minister warned.
The minister extended his “deepest gratitude” to organisers EMGS and the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MoHE), for their “unwavering commitment” in making AEF2025 event a reality.
The event also saw the soft launch of the ASEAN Global Exchange for Mobility & Scholarship (ASEAN GEMS), a comprehensive platform designed to provide ASEAN students with access to scholarships and higher education opportunities.
Zambry announced that for 2025, 300 scholarships have been secured, amounting to approximately USD 4 million, in what he describes as a “significant step in expanding educational access”.
“We invite other ASEAN universities to contribute to this noble initiative,” he told delegates.
The forum also marked the launch of the ASEAN Student Mobility Program, in collaboration with Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and 13 esteemed Malaysian universities. The hybrid event gathered students and industry leaders across ASEAN to carry out activities designed to foster innovation, leadership, and collaboration, while addressing regional challenges and advance the Sustainable Development Goals.
Student mobility was a key theme in addresses from both leaders, with Zambry highlighting the role of intra-regional mobility.
“Countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia are increasingly becoming preferred destinations for students from neighbouring nations, enriching the academic landscape and fostering a stronger sense of ASEAN solidarity,” he said, pledging to advocate for policies that facilitate seamless student movement, establish mutual recognition of academic credits across ASEAN institutions, and enhance government support for mobility programs.
Zambry acknowledged another key aspect of ASEAN’s higher education future – transnational education (TNE).
“The establishment of branch campuses of foreign universities in Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam has provided world-class education while retaining talent within ASEAN,” he told delegates.
“Dual-degree programs, joint research collaborations, and online education partnerships offer students access to global knowledge while remaining in their home countries. By strengthening transnational education, we ensure that our students receive a globally competitive education while staying rooted in ASEAN’s rich cultural and economic landscape.”
Elsewhere, throughout the forum, over 10 collaborations were signed between universities across ASEAN, while roundtable discussions fostered meaningful dialogue and led to the drafting of resolutions.
Over the past few years, calls for the boycott of Israeli universities have grown louder. This discourse generally entwines two different sets of arguments. The first is an argument about the effectiveness or validity of academic boycotts. The second, because it’s Israel, is about whether Israeli universities are being unfairly targeted due to anti-Semitism. Curiously, what Israeli universities themselves might have specifically done to deserve is often relegated to an afterthought.
My guest today is Maya Wind. She is an Israeli citizen, and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Riverside. She is also the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel, How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, published last year by Verso press. Her book is a direct answer to that last question. The charge sheet that she brings against Israeli universities is a long one. And it should give people pause before thinking that Israeli universities are unproblematic.
Some of you are not going to like this interview. I suspect some will not enjoy the platform given to these opinions. But given the tenor of the times, I very much think it is worth a listen. I think there are two points in particular that are worth thinking about. The first is whether the boycott is about the universities themselves, or about Israel in general. The second is the standard for boycott. Wind makes it clear that she doesn’t see an absolute standard here other than that some oppressed group requests. So, for her, the relative level of complicity of Israeli universities in the dispossession of Palestinians and, say, that of Chinese universities in the repression of Uyghurs is irrelevant because the key factor is that one group asked for the boycott and the other didn’t. It’s about consistent allyship rather than relative guilt. That wasn’t something I had understood beforehand, and I’m guessing it might be new for many of you as well. But maybe it’s best if I let my guest explain things on her own. Over to Maya.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 3.22 | Why Boycott? Maya Wind on the Case Against Israeli Universities
Alex Usher (AU): Maya, your book lays out the case for sanctions against Israeli universities and for boycotting them. But before we get to that, I want to ask about something you don’t really cover in the book: What’s the evidence that boycotts or academic sanctions are an effective strategy for forcing political change?
Maya Wind (MW): That’s a really crucial question. First, for listeners who may not be as familiar with the context, the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) was first called for by Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005—so, 20 years ago now. The BDS movement, including the call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, was heavily inspired by the movement against apartheid in South Africa. In that case, the isolation of many apartheid institutions, including universities, played a key role in bringing an end to the apartheid system.
Of course, as academics and students, we are all students of history. If we take seriously the idea that Israel is a settler state and that Israelis are colonizers, then history tells us that colonizers have never initiated the process of decolonization on their own. In every case of settler colonialism, external pressure has been necessary to compel colonizers to participate in that process. The BDS movement is specifically seeking to create that external pressure by building a grassroots international movement to hold the Israeli state—and its universities—accountable.
PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, actually predates the broader BDS call by a year. It was formed in 2004 and, even then—21 years ago now—identified Israeli universities as pillars of the system of racial rule and apartheid. As academics, particularly those in the West, we have an obligation to respond to this call by severing our ties to Israeli universities. Otherwise, we remain directly complicit.
AU: Your charge sheet, if I can put it that way, against Israeli institutions is really threefold. The first major charge—using your words from the epilogue—is that they need to stop denying that their campuses stand on expropriated Palestinian lands and cease to serve as engines of Judaization, colonization, and Palestinian dispossession. What exactly do Israeli institutions do in this regard, and why does it matter so much?
MW: Right. Here, I’m following not only Palestinian civil society and Palestinian scholars but also Indigenous scholars around the world—particularly in settler states—who have long examined the role of the settler university. These scholars have highlighted how universities have often functioned as pillars of ongoing Indigenous dispossession, built on stolen lands that were cleared through genocide. This is part of a broader, global movement, and there is extensive critical scholarship on this issue in other settler states as well.
In the context of the Israeli settler state, “Judaization” is actually the official terminology used by the Israeli government. It refers to a process seen in many settler states: the twin projects of continual removal and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the transfer of Palestinian land ownership to Jewish Israelis, and the ongoing expansion of Israeli frontiers—redistributing the Jewish population across what was historic Palestine.
If we trace the history of Israeli universities, this pattern becomes clear. It starts with Hebrew University, the first university of the Zionist movement, and continues with all the universities established by the Israeli state since then. For example, the University of Haifa is in the Galilee, the region with the highest Palestinian population. Ben-Gurion University is in the Negev, an arid southern region where Jewish Israelis were historically less likely to settle. The most recent university to be accredited, Ariel University, is located in the illegal settlement of Ariel, deep in the occupied West Bank.
For over a century, Israeli universities have been physically designed, built, and strategically located to support the state’s project of Palestinian dispossession, particularly in regions of strategic concern to the Israeli government. Any reckoning with Israeli universities—or settler universities more broadly—must begin with the question of land itself. This is one of the central issues I explore in the book.
AU: Before I go into the other elements of the charge sheet, you’ve used the term “settler” and “settler colonialism” a couple of times. What distinction, if any, do you draw between the need to boycott Israeli universities, as you argue, and the historical case that could be made for boycotting institutions in Canada or the United States? Why sanction one and not the other?
MW: That’s a really important question. The first and primary answer is that the Indigenous population most directly impacted by the violence of these settler universities—in this case, Palestinians—have explicitly called for a boycott. A boycott is not a value; it is a tactic. Indigenous movements around the world have used different tactics to advance decolonization, and these tactics change over time and depend on the specific context.
In this case, more than 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society came together to advance their liberation struggle and issued a call for boycott. They outlined a theory of change, arguing that Western governments—particularly those heavily invested in the Israeli settler state—not only provide arms but also offer diplomatic and legal immunity that allows Israel to continue committing war crimes, including, most recently, the crime of genocide. Given this, they have made it clear that those of us in the international community have an obligation to rise up and pressure our own governments to sever ties and isolate the Israeli regime until the process of decolonization begins and the system of apartheid is dismantled.
This is a grassroots movement, and we do not need to wait for our governments to act.
AU: That’s a useful clarification. The second area where you’re most critical is the cooperation between universities on one hand and the military, Shin Bet, and other security services on the other. You write about how the connection between university research and the military in Israel is somewhat different from how it operates in the United States or other countries, partly because research institutes in Israel cooperate so directly with the security sector. What does this military cooperation look like in practice? And is it just about research, or is there also an academic programming element?
MW: Right. This is a very important question because the collaboration between Israeli universities, the security state, and the military industry is incredibly deep and comprehensive. We see this in several ways.
First, Israeli universities function as military bases by designing and operating specialized, degree-granting programs tailored for security state personnel, including the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), Israeli police forces, and soldiers. These are the same forces that have engaged in decades of daily violations of Palestinian rights and international law. This is well documented, and these academic programs actively train soldiers and security personnel to refine their operations.
One example is Hebrew University, where the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies trains soldiers in the Intelligence Corps, providing them with linguistic and regional expertise to improve their surveillance of the Palestinian population. This training directly contributes to the creation of target banks for airstrikes in Gaza, as we have seen over the past 16 months. That is just one of many examples.
Another form of cooperation is research and institutional collaborations. The Institute for Criminology at Hebrew University and the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University work closely with military and security state experts to produce scholarship that advances security operations. Their research informs policy recommendations for the Israeli security establishment.
A third example is the close ties between universities and military industries. It is not widely known that major arms manufacturers like Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Elbit Systems—the largest suppliers to the Israeli military and major global exporters of weapons—were actually founded on Israeli university campuses. These companies develop and refine their technologies by testing them in occupied Palestinian territories, violating international and human rights law daily. They then market these products globally as “battle-proven.” To this day, Israeli universities serve as critical laboratories for these industries.
In all of these ways, it is impossible to understand the Israeli security state and military-industrial complex without examining the role of the Israeli university system.
AU: The third charge you discuss is that Israeli universities are not academically neutral—that they do not provide all staff and students with equal opportunities to be protected from outside influence or to thrive academically. We often hear that Israeli universities do not discriminate, but you have a different perspective.
MW: Yes. One of the things that really struck me while researching and writing this book was the extensive scholarly work that already exists on this issue. I conducted an ethnography of Israeli universities, spending significant time across Israel’s eight major public universities. I spoke with and accompanied Palestinian student organizers, and I interviewed both Palestinian and Jewish Israeli faculty and staff.
What stood out to me—both in my fieldwork and in my background research—was just how much has already been written about this. There is a rich body of scholarship, not only in Hebrew and Arabic but also in English, often published in leading peer-reviewed journals in Europe and North America. Palestinian scholars, both in Palestinian and Israeli universities, have extensively documented the constraints on knowledge production, the marginalization of Palestinian critical epistemology, and the challenges of producing anti-colonial scholarship within the confines of the Zionist university system. They have also written in detail about the systematic discrimination Palestinian students face and their experiences within these institutions.
Yet, despite this extensive scholarship, I find that it is largely unread in Western academic communities. This raises important questions about why we, in the West, have failed to engage with this work and why we have instead accepted the narratives presented by Jewish Israeli university administrators and scholars, who often portray Israeli universities as beacons of democracy. In reality, this has never been the case, and Palestinians have been documenting and writing about these inequalities for a very long time. I cite much of this work in my book, and I also corroborated it through my own interviews.
What I found was not only that Israeli universities are embedded within and implicated in a broader system of apartheid, but also that Palestinian student organizing and political activism on campuses are violently suppressed. This suppression has intensified over the past 16 months, as Palestinian scholars and students speak out against the genocide and mobilize for Palestinian liberation on Israeli campuses.
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AU: Maya, you’ve discussed issues at several institutions across Israel. You’ve specifically singled out Ariel University for its role in normalizing the occupation and Hebrew University for its failure to protect academic freedom. Are there any institutions that stand out to you as having a better record than others? Is there one that you might say should not be subject to a boycott?
MW: The call for an academic boycott was laid out by Palestinian civil society and Palestinian scholars. Just last year, in 2023, this call was reiterated by not only the Union of Palestinian Faculty and Employees but also by every single Palestinian student union at every Palestinian university. They reaffirmed their call for us to enact the academic boycott.
This is a call coming from Palestinian civil society, and as it is worded, it applies to all complicit Israeli universities. In the course of my research, I found that every single Israeli university is deeply implicated in the structures of occupation and apartheid. Not one is exempt.
At this time, the call remains for a boycott of all Israeli universities, and I hope my book helps to substantiate why that is necessary.
AU: It sounds to me like the Palestinian call is really about Israel as a whole, rather than specifically about Israeli universities, right? And I have to say, when I read the chapter on the relationship between universities and the military, I thought to myself: I can’t imagine a university in any country—let alone one as highly militarized as Israel—saying no to providing academic training for military officers.
Universities are instrumental to the state, right? So when we talk about disapproving of university policies, aren’t we really talking about disapproving of Israeli state priorities? Is there any way an individual Israeli institution could change this if it wanted to?
MW: I think that’s a really critical question. We have to understand—and take seriously—that settler states, systems of violence, and even genocide do not reproduce themselves automatically. These are systems of violence that are upheld by a vast network of institutions, including many in civil society. It is not just the military, not just the security state, and not just military industries. A whole host of public institutions—what we often think of as civil society institutions—lend themselves to this violence of elimination. This case is no different.
But what we also have to recognize is that it is not just the institutions—it is the people within them who sustain and reproduce these structures. There is the active labor of thousands of Israelis, across hundreds of institutions, including universities, who are making this violence possible.
What I want to emphasize here is that Israeli academics have tried very hard to have it both ways. The call for an academic boycott has been underway for more than two decades, and one of the main arguments used by Israeli university administrators and academics who oppose it is that they cannot possibly be held accountable for the crimes of the Israeli state—if such crimes even exist, as is still debated within Israeli universities. They claim that it is unjust to hold them responsible for what the state is doing.
But at the same time, when they are confronted—particularly over the last year—by thousands of students, faculty, and staff participating in the boycott, pointing out that they are directly complicit in apartheid and now genocide, these same university administrators and Israeli academics respond in exactly the opposite way. They say precisely what you just said: Of course, we are embedded in the state. Many of our students are soldiers. Why wouldn’t we cooperate with the state we are a part of?
They often go even further, offering justifications for genocide and apartheid. So they cannot have it both ways. Either they defend themselves by claiming they are not at all accountable and cannot be implicated in what the state is doing, or they admit that they are, in fact, part of the state—at which point they must also take responsibility for their role in sustaining its system of oppression.
AU: One argument that emerged in Canada over the last few months—particularly around the end of the encampment at the University of Windsor, if I’m not mistaken—was that the university agreed to boycott Israeli universities as part of a resolution. In response, some argued—I can’t remember if it was Michael Geist or Anthony Housefather in the House of Commons—that if you boycott Israeli institutions but not universities in other countries guilty of similar actions, then that is antisemitic.
For instance, many of the same criticisms you make about Israeli universities—such as failing to uphold free debate and cooperating with the military—could likely be made about Chinese universities in relation to the government’s policies in Xinjiang or Tibet. What do you make of that argument? Should we also be boycotting Chinese universities? And if not, why not?
MW: Boycotts—whether organized by unions or any other group—are always made in response to a call. It is not up to us to unilaterally decide to boycott a university system. That decision belongs to the communities directly impacted by the violence of that university system. When such a call is made, it is then up to the international community to assess whether the institutions in question are, in fact, complicit—and to decide whether to participate in the boycott.
To my knowledge, there has been no such call from other Indigenous communities in similar contexts. There could be, and if there were, I think many of us would absolutely consider participating. But this argument is ultimately a distraction—one that is often pushed by Israel and its Zionist supporters to divert attention from the central issue at hand. The reality is that Palestinians have called for a boycott. Now, it is up to us to assess whether that call is justified and whether we will comply
AU: You wrote this book prior to October 7, 2023. What has changed since then, both in terms of how Israeli universities behave and in terms of the boycott movement?
MW: Over the past 16 months, we have seen a devastating acceleration of a project that has spanned over a hundred years. Genocide is structural to the Israeli state, just as it is to settler states elsewhere. For two decades, Palestinian civil society has been telling us that various institutions in Israeli society have long served as part of the infrastructure laying the groundwork for the genocide we have witnessed unfold over the last 16 months—part of the Israeli state’s long-term project to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the Palestinian people.
My book, which I submitted to the press shortly before this latest acceleration of the genocide began, details many of the ways in which universities are implicated. But it should come as no surprise that this is a structural problem. Israeli universities have continuously worked in service of the state, uninterrupted and ongoing, from before the state’s founding to the present moment—including this phase of the genocide.
Over the last 16 months, Israeli universities have continued to develop weapons and technologies used against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They have continued training soldiers and producing Hasbara—Israeli state propaganda—to shield Israel from international criticism. In fact, Israeli universities have actively intervened to prevent academic boycotts from being implemented on Western campuses, smearing student, faculty, and staff organizers, and in some cases, calling for them to be forcibly dispersed. They have also played a direct role in producing legal scholarship to aid the Israeli state in resisting the genocide case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.
Beyond this, universities have provided tangible benefits to soldiers, offering course credit, scholarships, and special privileges for those returning from Gaza. In countless ways, Israeli universities remain embedded in the infrastructure of violence that sustains the Israeli state, even as that state now stands on trial in the highest courts in the world for genocide.
If you’re asking what has changed, I think the biggest shift is that more people have now come to recognize what Palestinians have been calling for over the past 20 years: the urgency of intervention. There is an increasing recognition that international civil society must take action and stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation—and participate in the broader project of decolonization. That is a significant development in the global movement for Palestinian liberation, and we will continue to build on it.
There is no going back.
AU: Maya, thanks so much for joining us today.
MW: Thank you.
AU: And that just leaves me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, as well as you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for tuning in. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Folks, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education.
Join us again next week when I’ll be joined by Hilligje van’t Land. She’s the Secretary General of the International Association of Universities, located in Paris, and she’ll be talking about the joys of running the world’s oldest transnational university organization. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.
United States President Donald Trump’s first six weeks of his second term has been defined by 76 executive orders, the disestablishment of the national education department and establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
One of the most controversial executive orders, which is a written directive signed by a president that orders immediate governmental action, was titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” signed on President Trump’s first day back in office on January 20, 2025.
He directed all federal DEI staff be placed on paid leave and, eventually, laid off. He has also signed another Executive Order, titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”
DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and refers to programs and committees that help people from underrepresented backgrounds (women, Indigenous, Black, for instance) get into, and stay in, jobs or courses those people wouldn’t traditionally participate in. It is largely similar to the strategy of the Australian Universities Accord.
President Trump has also cut funding to schools and universities that do not cancel DEI programs. He labelled the programs “radical,” “wasteful” and said they demonstrate “immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”
The full effects of these Executive Orders and DEI changes are yet to be seen because decisions regarding DEI will ultimately be made by the court.
However, private companies in the US have walked away from internal DEI programs, including Meta (which has worked closely with Trump as of late), Google (which provides some services to the US government), Pepsi, Disney and multiple prominent banks.
There has been no significant walk away from DEI in Australian private companies, and many universities continue to discuss how to bolster and “future-proof” internal DEI programs.
Australia’s ambassador to the US from 2020 to 2023, Arthur Sinodinos, told the Universities Australia Solutions Summit last week that institutions are best off making decisions “based off their objectives,” but should enact genuine change, not just tick diversity boxes.
“My view on DEI is that [universities should] start from a posture that they want to make the best use of all the talent and resources available to them,” he said.
“If you’re also interested in trying to expand the reach of higher education to groups that might otherwise be disadvantaged, you have to find ways to do that, but in a way that also addresses the genuine issue.
“I think access to higher education is still important for a country like Australia, which has to make – given its population – the best use of the resources it’s got.
“The argument that you can just leave it to the market, the meritocracy will still be there [is wrong]. Frankly, in the market, some people start with a head start with with inbuilt advantages.”
President Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was also on the panel at the UA summit, said he thinks DEI programs in the US have gone “too far to one side.”
“One of the reasons you’re seeing the pushback against it in my country is that it went too far to one side. I don’t know where it is in this country, but at some point it may go too far, and the pushback will come.”
He also explained why this Trump term is already more action-packed than his first was at this time: the President expected to win in November, 2024, but not in 2016.
“Not only did [Trump] expect to win, [his team has] been working for four years on what they would do when they won,” he said.
“What are we gonna do the first day? The first week, the first month, the first 100 days? Which is why we’re seeing all these executive orders. It’s actually four years worth of planning coming forward.”
Mr Mulvaney said he thinks DEI could survive if its reasoning for existing is communicated in a tailored way.
He said Trump’s administration is receptive to initiatives that improve efficiency, productivity and merit.
“You could have a program that is good on on the climate, [for example,] but that’s not your selling pitch. That doesn’t register with the person you’re talking to,” he explained.
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“You have to learn how to speak the language of the person you’re talking to. Don’t change what you’re doing, perhaps just simply change how you explain it.”
UA chief executive Luke Sheehy was asked after his National Press Club address last Wednesday whether he thinks an “anti-woke” sentiment will affect how universities function.
“Obviously there’s a major disruption that’s happened in America with Trump 2.0 … One of the things we’ve learned is, once articulated in a certain way, positive sentiment skyrockets for universities,” he responded.
“If you offer a simple proposition: we have 4,000 fewer teachers than we need today ,and universities are the only way to get those skilled workers into the workforce to support young people; we need 132,000 more nurses, etc.
“Then remove yourself from what happens on the front pages of newspapers and what occupies political pundits, and think about what the real Australian people need and want from the university sector.
“My hope is that the more we talk about the important role of universities and our core mission in education and research, the more Australians, irrespective of whether or not they went to university or not, they see the value for us as part of our future.”
The university sector’s declining “social license” has been a major topic of discussion of late for university leaders.
There is a growing sentiment that universities, and the knowledge economy, needs to “show” society why they’re worth the funding and enrolments.
“We always have more work to do. In an era where there is declining trust in institutions, I think it’s really important that universities invest in themselves in terms of how they engage with their communities,” Mr Sheehy continued.
