That price is the expectation of performative neutrality.
Because leaders are seen as speaking for the institution, we are implicitly—or sometimes explicitly—told to relinquish a public voice. No provocative social media posts. No sharp public commentary on matters deemed “controversial.” The assumption is that institutional representation demands silence on the issues that matter most.
Consider, for example, the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which many scholars of decolonization and international law have described as genocidal. Or the broader pattern of U.S.-backed Israeli settler-colonial violence and aggression, including recent actions involving Iran. These are routinely framed as “controversial issues” on which university leaders must remain studiously neutral.
As if neutrality in the face of what many regard as genocide is a neutral choice.
As if silence, for a scholar whose life’s work has centered on decolonization, is merely a matter of professional discretion.
We academics are skilled at constructing justifications for this enforced quietude. We tell ourselves we are serving the institution. We are protecting our discipline. We are safeguarding student mobility and exchange programs. We are looking out for our colleagues. We cloak these rationalizations in the language of pragmatism, responsibility, and institutional stewardship.
But these justifications, upon closer examination, are hollow.
At the heart of the academic vocation is the voice—our capacity and our duty to speak from conscience, to critique power, and to name injustice even (especially) when doing so invites repression. The scholar’s role is not to manage perceptions or smooth institutional optics; it is to bear witness, to analyze, and to speak truth to power. This includes holding accountable ruling-class politicians and government ministers whose decisions shape the very conditions we study.
Our craft is refined not through calculated silence but through the disciplined, courageous exercise of voice. We grow as intellectuals and as moral agents by refusing to outsource our conscience to administrative expediency.
I write this now because increasing numbers of my students—bright, principled, emerging scholars—are reaching out to me for advice. They ask about leadership roles in the academy: what they entail, what they demand, and whether they are worth pursuing. Many sense, even early in their careers, the tension between institutional advancement and intellectual freedom.
This essay is for you, my students considering leadership roles.
Leadership in higher education can be meaningful and impactful. It can allow one to shape curricula, support colleagues, and create space for transformative work. But it should not require surrendering the very thing that makes academic life worthwhile: the freedom—and the responsibility—to speak.
If the price of a title, a seat at the table, or a line on a CV is the muting of one’s voice on questions of profound moral and scholarly weight, then we must ask whether that price is too high. The academy does not need more administrators skilled in the art of institutional neutrality. It needs scholars willing to model what it means to think critically, to speak honestly, and to lead with moral clarity—even when the institution would prefer silence.
To my students contemplating leadership: pursue it, but never at the cost of your voice. Never at the cost of your integrity. The academy’s future depends on those who refuse to treat silence as the default setting for professional success.