Gold and God

More universities were created after the Second World War than throughout human history (Schofer and Meyer Reference Schofer and Meyer2005). Despite obvious variation in their economic, political and social institutions, contemporary nation-states have embraced what originated as medieval guilds of masters and scholars in places such as Bologna, Paris and Oxford. These guilds were both parochial and cosmopolitan. The guilds were parochial insofar as they literally evolved from cathedral schools under the auspices of the Catholic Church with priests and aspiring priests as their inhabitants. But they were also cosmopolitan with Latin as a common language and guild membership not restricted by yet-to-be-developed blood and soil nationalist narratives. The historian Hastings Rashdall tells us that, in its origin, the medieval university was a guild of foreign (my italics) students. These guilds flourished in a politically decentralized Western Europe loosely integrated via a common cultural framework anchored via religious beliefs and practices. Within this framework, the medieval universities were constituted as relatively autonomous corporations (Ben-David Reference Ben-David1977). Their relative autonomy was in good part due to the lack of a central and controlling authority. The Bishop of Rome was at most primus inter pares, with the Bishop of Paris often more influential. Secular authorities were also fragmented in a feudalist era of ‘parcelized sovereignty’ (Anderson Reference Anderson1974). Within this decentralized framework, universities had greater space to manoeuvre, relying on multiple sources of patronage for their formation and persistence. Universities were not dependent on any single power. I will return to this point in reflecting on the rise of American universities.

But why were the medieval universities sponsored? Why were they the recipients of papal and royal charters that involved material resources and normative support? Service to the nation narratives is today common, in both economic and political terms (Douglass et al. Reference Douglass, King and Feller2009; Douglas Reference Douglas2016). But these more utilitarian rationales for universities would have rung hollow in a world without national states. Moreover, utilitarian narratives often strike contemporary scholars as inadequate rationales for the university. Universities, we contend, are more than nationalist hubs or economic engines. Universities, we affirm, are distinctive spaces dedicated to the pursuit of truth, the knowledge for knowledge’s sake trope. Religious orthodoxy notwithstanding, medieval universities were institutional innovations which allowed for the pursuit of truth through reason (Sitze Reference Sitze2025). To be sure, reason was not seen as challenging revelation. However, long before ‘The Age of Reason’, some faith in reason was necessary to support universities. In politically decentralized Western Europe, universities evolved as neither fully Church nor State agencies but instead as relatively autonomous corporations. Throughout their long historical march, universities have sought to maintain this organizational status while also affirming their institutional aspiration to function as a distinctive space for the pursuit of truth. The distinction between organization and institution roughly corresponds to what Sitze (Reference Sitze2025) has called the form and the function of the university and what has also been depicted as the structure and the idea of the university (Frank et al. Reference Frank, Scott Smith and Meyerforthcoming). Calls for university autonomy emphasize the organizational form or structure of the university while demands for academic freedom stress the institutional function or idea of the university. Both university form and function are currently under attack.

To be sure, universities in the twenty-first century vary with respect to both their organizational design and their commitment to pursuing truth. Some universities may have less organizational backbone than others. Some national leaders may be more inclined to think of universities as nationalist hubs or economic engines. What appears to be worldwide is the growing centrality of universities and the broad range of political, social and economic outcomes associated with higher educational expansion These outcomes include higher levels of economic development, greater political participation, more robust civil societies and greater engagement with human rights and environmental movements (Schofer et al. Reference Schofer, Ramirez and Meyer2020). Universities are clearly more relevant than ever, and thus perhaps, more challenging to the national states that constitute their main benefactors. The latter may share the fear much earlier professed by Hobbes. Oddly enough, it was fear of the Leviathan that was a core feature of American culture, giving rise to a strong emphasis on individuals and associations of individuals as key actors in a nation-building dynamic that preceded state formation (de Tocqueville Reference De Tocqueville1972 [1840]; Huntington Reference Huntington1968). Suspicion of government and confidence in individuals led to a distinctive higher-education system where private higher education came earlier than public higher education (Labaree Reference Labaree2016). Over time, a not-for-profit private sector emerged, blurring the distinction between private and public (Ramirez Reference Ramirez2020). As we shall see, all American universities ended up pursuing gold through a multiple-stakeholder strategy.

American Universities: On Becoming Organizational Actors

Not unlike decentralized medieval Europe, the American polity was also not under the control of a central political authority. Not surprisingly, political decentralization gave rise to educational decentralization. The latter has been emphasized as crucial to the earlier and more rapid expansion of higher educational enrolments in America, from Collins (Reference Collins1979) to Labaree (Reference Labaree2016). Social classes and status groups competed for access and, absent a national or even much of a sub-national regulatory regime, multiple providers created colleges and universities to accommodate demand. Religious authorities established modest colleges that evolved to become the backbone of the Ivy League. In addition to these men of the cloth, men of the coin founded Stanford, Vanderbilt, and the University of Chicago, among others. Through the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, the federal government granted lands to the states on condition that these were to be used to establish universities. Higher educational expansion was facilitated not just by the absence of a regulatory framework but by the presence of much confidence in the value of higher education.

Although the emergent universities in America would differ from their medieval ancestors in their organizational design, they were similar in their confidence in their institutional mission or function. And just as the medieval geopolitical entities took pride in their universities, so too would universities command interest in America. However, the American higher education experience departed from both the medieval past and even from nineteenth-century European models in some important ways. They were far more flexible as to what could be taught in universities, business and agricultural studies, for example (Gelber Reference Gelber2011). They did not heed the Flexner admonition that universities were in but not of society (Flexner Reference Flexner1930). Even as American universities invoked the idea of the university to enhance their legitimacy, they were increasingly organized to survive. Fearful of a Leviathan that never was in place in America, universities learned to identify and cultivate multiple sources of funding. This would constitute a multiple-stakeholder strategy that would enable universities to thrive without seeing themselves as being too dependent on any one patron. To commit to that strategy, American universities would become organizational actors, not just associations of masters and scholars nor only state or church agencies.

In what follows, I focus on the rise and diffusion of development offices in American universities (Skinner Reference Skinner2019). The overriding goal of a university development office is to secure funding for the university. This innovation became a core feature of university strategies to endure in perpetuity. These strategies in turn required universities to become organizational actors, that is autonomous goal-oriented entities with plans and structures to attain these goals (Krücken and Meier Reference Krücken, Meier, Drori, Meyer and Hwang2006; Bromley and Meyer Reference Bromley and Meyer2015.)

There is nothing new about universities needing funds. What is innovative is the idea that universities should always be in fundraising mode and that a differentiated office would play a key role in orchestrating funding. As early as 1908, Harvard President Charles Elliott called for systematic fundraising to create what is now called an endowment, a pool of permanent funds carefully managed and invested to assure the permanence of the university (Kimball and Johnson Reference Kimball and Johnson2012a). This process involved identifying donors and persuading them to generously identify with the university in its pursuit of excellence. The best universities in the world, Elliot was convinced, would be the universities with the greatest amount of free money, that is, the largest endowment (Kimball and Johnson Reference Kimball and Johnson2012b). By the 1930s, Harvard was in fact the best financially endowed university and it continues to enjoy that distinction. Other private universities followed, their excellence aspirations increasingly linked to donors and dollars (see Lowen Reference Lowen1997 on the rise of Stanford; see Lee et al. Reference Lee, Skinner and Ramirez2026 on development orientations in non-American universities). The wealth and prestige of American universities indeed co-vary (Geiger Reference Geiger2004).

With more secure government funding, public universities were slower to move in the direction of building endowments. However, in 1958, the Ford Foundation funded a higher-education conference that brought together leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the role of higher education, an increasingly expanding and more nationally prominent institution. Bear in mind that this conference was not a response to a financial crisis but occurred during what some scholars might see as the golden age of higher education in America. The main recommendation that stemmed from this conference is that every university should have a senior administrator that reports directly to the university president on alumni relations, fundraising and public relations (Drezner and Huehls Reference Drezner and Huehls2015). Bear in mind that universities typically already had some organizational structures dedicated to alumni and to facing and communicating with the public. Moreover, these structures had already given rise to national associations. In 1974, the American Alumni Council and the American College Public Relations Association merged to form the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. The main function of the Council is to provide advice on how to professionalize fundraising in higher education. Not surprisingly, an Association of Chief Development Officers in Higher Education followed, with membership therein expanding, thereby reaffirming the centrality of fundraising. The latter in turn would be rebranded as institutional advancement (Drezner and Huehls Reference Drezner and Huehls2015). What was an innovation in the early twentieth century is today ubiquitous in American higher education (Lee et al. Reference Lee, Skinner and Ramirez2026).

American higher education underwent another major transformation, the rise and diffusion of university offices dedicated to promoting diversity. Between 1968 and 2020, the proportion of universities with diversity offices greatly increased, with almost eight out of ten universities displaying a diversity office by 2020 (Gavrila et al. Reference Gavrila, Overbey and Ramirez2025). Elite universities led the way. Scholars therein generated normative and pragmatic rationales for a transformation influenced by the civil-rights movements of the 1960s and anti-discrimination laws (Clayton-Pedersen et al. Reference Clayton-Pedersen, O’Neill and Musil2017). The latter would shift to more active efforts to diversify the composition of universities, first the student and then the faculty bodies. University responses over time shifted and called for not only more inclusiveness but also to change the terms of inclusion. Universities were expected to not only include more people of colour but to also become less Eurocentric. The transformations would be both demographic and cultural, with race and ethnic studies curricula early manifestations of cultural change (Rojas Reference Rojas2007). More recently, variants of critical race theory (Martinez and Smith Reference Martinez and Smith2025) and post-colonial perspectives (Young Reference Young2016) promised to further the changing culture of universities. Perhaps not surprisingly, a National Association of Chief Diversity Officers in Higher Education has also emerged. Once again, we see that organization-specific developments gave rise to an organizational field that in turn fuelled university diversity commitments via the creation of a network of professionals that included centres and think tanks (Brint Reference Brint2025).

To summarize, American higher education expanded earlier due not only to a lack of a centralized controlling authority but also to extraordinary confidence in the transformative potential of higher education. American universities were early movers in embracing a multiple-stakeholders strategy reflected in the rise of university development offices with fundraising as their core mission. American universities were also early movers in creating diversity-promoting offices. Both transformations required universities to see the world as organizational actors with more formal goals and rational strategies to attain these goals. The ascendancy of American universities in world rankings triggered narratives in favour of the entrepreneurial and inclusive university (Clark Reference Clark1998). Multiple sources of funding would shield universities from reliance on a single fiscal patron. Expanded endowments would facilitate diversity-promoting endeavours.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, these transformations looked like a classic ‘win–win situation’. A triumphant American model of the university with ‘world class’ and ‘best practices’ metaphors would be confidently promoted worldwide (Ramirez and Tiplic Reference Ramirez and Tiplic2014). No one seriously anticipated that the valorization of diversity would be countered by its demonization, much less that the demonization efforts would appropriate the civil-rights frame earlier employed by the diversifiers. No one soberly recognized that, the rhetoric of multiple stakeholders notwithstanding, universities (and especially the elite ones) heavily relied on federal agencies for financial support. Lastly, in an earlier blue-skies era, no one really expected to see the federal government launch a full-throated and multi-pronged assault on the autonomy of the university and academic freedom therein.

American Universities Under Siege

The overriding goal of the federal attack is to diminish the autonomy of the university and the exercise of academic freedom by its professors therein. The main rationale for the attack is the contention that the diversity agenda of universities is both illegal and unfair, resulting in an unsafe space for those who do not subscribe to the agenda. The main weapons wielded by the federal government focus on the revenues of universities as well as their capacity to serve their students. The above exchange between the Trump administration official and the Georgetown Law School Dean illustrates these points. The law school is categorically ordered to cease teaching and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and it is explicitly threatened with the loss of professional opportunities for its students if it fails to comply. The official is situated in the civil-rights division of the Justice Department and in the whole text refers to a Supreme Court decision often invoked in attacks on the university. The response firmly rejects the order, asserting the right of the university to determine ‘…who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach’. The response does not assert that the university has an absolute right to determine who is to be admitted. The civil-rights activism of the 1960s led to legislative and judicial decisions that banned discrimination based on race. Unevenly but steadily, universities formally complied.

Over time though, do-not-discriminate policies morphed into affirmative-action policies that encouraged applications from underrepresented minorities. These policies were derided as reverse discrimination and legal challenges ensued. Landmark Supreme Court decisions ruled against race-based admission quotas but allowed for considering race as one of multiple admission criteria on the grounds that all students benefited from a more diverse student body (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, United States Supreme Court 1978; Grutter v. Bollinger, 123 S. Ct. 2325, United States Supreme Court 2003). These decisions legally anchored the diversity-for-excellence idea that permeated across universities. But just as an earlier network of professionals and think tanks provided rationales for valorizing diversity, a demonizing diversity network emerged and mobilized, often contending that what was needed was a colour-blind meritocracy (Rufo et al. Reference Rufo, Shapiro and Beienburg2023). This unexpected appropriation of the anti-discrimination thrust of the civil rights movement received a major boost with the 2023 Supreme Court Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard decision (United States Supreme Court 2023) that reversed prior rulings and prohibited the use of race as a factor in university admission decisions. The return of Donald Trump to the White House turned out to be the ultimate boost.

In retrospect, universities clearly underestimated the growing opposition to DEI. The opposition was gaining momentum while public confidence in higher education was eroding. A 2023 Gallup poll found that only 36% of Americans had high levels of confidence in higher education, a decline of about 20% from 2005 (Brenan Reference Brenan2023). Universities also overestimated how much their endowments would guarantee their autonomy. Although rising tuitions constituted a small fraction of the endowments, lack of affordability for students and parents, scholarships notwithstanding, no doubt contributed to the erosion of confidence in higher education (Bunch Reference Bunch2023). Thus, two major organizational transformations – university development and university diversity offices – intertwined to propel a populist critique that framed universities as unfair and fat to boot. The critique was especially aimed at elite universities, now much less trusted as citadels of reason but instead assailed as politically correct left-wing enterprises that needed to be restrained. And, despite their multiple-stakeholder strategies, these universities were highly dependent on federal funding. These universities were also seen as highly critical of the Trump administration; the enemies, according to the Vice President.

The assault on the autonomy of the university has frequently focused on admissions, curricular and faculty hiring policies. Unconvinced that universities are complying with the Supreme Court Fair Admissions decision, the Trump administration demands access to university application and admission data disaggregated by race and by standardized test scores. The university admission process in American universities has never relied on a single indicator of merit; athletic prowess and legacy status, among other factors, play a role in deciding who is admitted (Karabel Reference Karabel2005; Stevens Reference Stevens2007). But the administration seems solely concerned with whether underrepresented minorities are favoured. Moreover, although the Supreme Court decision only focused on admissions, a lot of political oversight over curricula is aggressively sought by the federal (and some state-level) authorities. Lists of questionable areas of research and instruction abound; faculty expertise is scorned with specific professors targeted (see Professor Watchlist, a website run by conservative advocacy organization, Turning Point, USA). Administrators are urged to exercise more control over a domain earlier recognized as best left to faculty expertise. This in turn has led to calls for less faculty authority over faculty hiring. All these demands directly affect both the organizational autonomy of the university but also the academic freedom of its inhabitants. At a time when the authority of science is challenged (Cole et al. Reference Cole, Schofer and Velasco2023) and what constitutes expertise is unclear (Eyal Reference Eyal2019), the institutional mandate of the university, its truth-seeking raison d’être is much under siege.

There is nothing new about challenges to university autonomy and faculty authority. Napoleon saw universities as conservative leftovers from the ancien régime and created alternative higher-education institutions that continue to thrive today. Mao abolished the universities with a Red over Expert mantra, although universities have returned to China. What is distinctive about the challenges in America is the degree to which these focus on the fiscal welfare of the universities. There is the threat to undo the not-for-profit status of the private universities and to do so via executive order. The not-for-profit status is a favourable status universities enjoy together with other voluntary associations that are legally classified as serving the public interest (Arnsberger et al. Reference Arnsberger, Ludlum, Riley and Stanton2008). That status justifies the low taxes universities pay on the profits they make out of investments from their endowments (Arnsberger et al. Reference Arnsberger, Ludlum, Riley and Stanton2008). A milder form of this threat is in place and increases the tax rate, from a flat 1.4% to a tiered system with the best-endowed elite universities paying as much as 8% (O’Melveny and Myers Reference O’Melveny and Myers2025). Public universities are not affected nor in fact will the change impact most universities. The impacted ones are not pushing back, in part because they earlier feared an even larger spike but also because the size of their endowments likely attracts negative press. Expanded endowments enable extended scholarships, but this fact does not generate much positive public support. Sticking it to Harvard ($53.2 billion), Yale ($40.7 billion), Stanford ($36.5 billion), Princeton ($34.1 billion) and MIT ($23.5 billion) is not going to provoke much popular outrage – these are the estimated endowments for the 2023–2024 fiscal year (Wood Reference Wood2025).

Furthermore, universities face diminishing resources through two other mechanisms. First, many grants from Federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have either been cancelled or put on hold. Moreover, budgets for supporting research have been cut back and some research directions have been deemed inappropriate. Furthermore, there have been proposed cuts to the magnitude of the indirect costs previously covered by the Federal agencies. While one might imagine animosity aimed at the humanities and the social sciences, the bigger impacts of all these cuts fall on the applied natural sciences and especially on medical research, in good part because these fields commanded a greater share of the overall funding. Although universities count on private sources of financial support, Federal grants continue to be critical to maintaining research and research infrastructures. These cutbacks also affect public universities, especially the prominent research-oriented ones.

The assault often involves a quid-pro-quo character. The message is straightforward and blunt: cancelled grants will be restored but only if you share admission data, commit to ending diversity-promoting initiatives or fire offending professors and administrators. Diminished institutional autonomy and curtailed academic freedom are often the price required for needed resources. A blue skies era has given way to dark clouds and much concern over the future of the university.

Acquiescence

Universities have acquiesced in multiple ways. First, there has been a major reassessment of university policies and practices regarding diversity. Some of the changes have been shifts in what these policies are called, with diversity often deleted from a new brand touting the virtues of belonging or community. Institutes, centres and departments especially associated with the promotion of diversity are especially scrutinized. Moreover, university leaders have explicitly communicated these changes to the government, often in the context of negotiations to restore cancelled grants (see Otterman Reference Otterman2025 for the case of Columbia). Eager to recover lost streams of revenue, boards of trustees have pressured university presidents to resign and many have; recent examples include the presidents of the University of Virginia and Northwestern. With fund recovery in mind, some universities have agreed to pay large fines, imposed as sanctions against universities that allegedly failed to protect Jewish students from Gaza protestors. UCLA, for example, has been threatened with a billion-dollar fine plus additional sanctions. Second, universities that reaffirm commitment to diversity are now more likely to refer to diverse ideas and to valorize differences in perspectives held by different individuals. An earlier emphasis on changing the culture of the university to accommodate the newly admitted will be softened. How much this shift affects the composition of student and faculty bodies remains to be seen, but some scholars anticipate dire consequences for faculty of colour (Dobbin and Kalev Reference Dobbin and Kalev2025). What is evident is that universities are undergoing rapid changes in response to a less supportive and sometimes downright hostile external environment. Lastly, it is important to recognize that even universities not directly confronted by federal or state authorities are defensively adjusting.

Resistance

Much of the resistance has involved challenging the legality of specific executive orders that undercut university autonomy. The cancellation of previously approved grants, for instance, has been blocked by the lower courts but it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court upholds the judgment of the lower courts in favour of Harvard. Formal legal resistance will enhance the importance of the legal offices of universities, thereby intensifying the degree to which universities operate as organizational actors purposely navigating an uncertain and turbulent environment (Furuta et al. Reference Furuta, Nachtigal and Ramirez2025). The legal rationalization of the university precedes the Trump era, but now legal expertise will be increasingly consulted with respect to a growing number of issues raised by political authorities.

The revitalization of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is another aspect of resistance. After decades of declining numbers, membership has dramatically increased in direct reaction to the assault. The Stanford chapter exponentially soared from five members on 1 April 2025, to 167 members by early October. The AAUP seeks to mobilize support for universities not just in law courts but also in the court of public opinion. Thus, AAUP on its own and in conjunction with some universities has filed multiple suits against the administration. The AAUP has also generated discussions on university autonomy and academic freedom within and across universities.

What is to be Learned?

Universities are targeted in a world in which populist and nationalist movements converge and view universities as too elitist and insufficiently nationalist. Both university autonomy and academic freedom are increasingly suspect. If the people directly or indirectly pay for the universities, why should universities be autonomous? Why should professors potentially enjoy lifetime employment and be free to pursue their own research interests? Should universities not be accountable to the elected officials who represent the people? Should professors not be required to only undertake research that benefits the nation? How these questions are framed will vary cross-nationally. But clearly universities are under pressure to justify their existence. In America, the most common justifications are unabashedly utilitarian.

University leaders point to great scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs that directly benefit people and country. But this defence is inadequate because universities do not monopolize scientific and technological developments, as these are also evident in the corporate world. Furthermore, this defence ignores the humanities and social sciences, forgetting that the public land grant universities were not just applied-science institutes but also sites that included broader humanistic knowledge-seeking endeavours (Frank and Gabler Reference Frank and Gabler2006). And yet, the inadequate defence best resonates with a public increasingly sceptical about the value of scholars, and academic knowledge under fire.

European universities differ from their American counterparts insofar as they have been more linked to state and/or professorial authority and less attuned to market logics and competitive dynamics (Dobbins et al. Reference Dobbins, Knill and Vögtle2011). Actively seeking funding from the private sector was neither common nor legitimate. Establishing university development offices that would coordinate fundraising activities and provide professional advice as to how to best invest these funds seemed like a farfetched idea. Alumni associations indeed were pretty much unheard of in European universities.

But things are changing. A recent study shows that some European universities now display a development orientation (Lee and Ramirez Reference Lee and Ramirez2023). Moreover, it turns out that links to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) positively influence the extent of university commitment to a development orientation. Exposure to consultants promoting a development orientation matter (Lee et al. Reference Lee, Skinner and Ramirez2026). In a world deeply influenced by American templates of university excellence, perhaps this should not come as a surprise.

Furthermore, the expansion of higher education in Europe, in good part propelled by the growth of women enrolments, has also resulted in a growing focus on diversity and the emergence of university diversity offices (see Oertel Reference Oertel2018 for the case of Germany). The discursive and structural shift to promoting diversity in American universities has been seized upon to undercut its autonomy. What was earlier valorized is increasingly demonized. The multiple-stakeholders strategy – rivers of revenue flowing into an expanding endowment lake – has not immunized universities from political assaults. Universities are vulnerable because they are very dependent on public monies, other sources notwithstanding. European universities are even more dependent on public funding.

So, what is to be done? In the American context, professors expect university leaders to play a more active role in protecting the university, its autonomous organizational form and its truth-seeking institutional function. To play this role, the leadership of the university will increasingly lean on its in-house lawyers and external consulting firms to better ascertain the legal ramifications of executive orders and the likely university countermoves. The lawyers will also provide faculty with guidelines on how best to advertise jobs, craft standards for tenure decisions, justify grant applications and perhaps even course syllabi. Much of this is already taking place. To protect itself, the university will further transform, becoming even more of an organizational actor.

The irony should not be lost on new public management (NPM)-critical scholars. For decades new public management was depicted as the main threat to the integrity of the university (Fleming Reference Fleming2021). Administrators would lord it over professors. They would rationalize research by imposing measurable scholarly outputs. They would rationalize teaching by favouring student evaluations and by eliminating courses and even departments for which there was little demand. They would create oversight committees and future oriented task forces. The intended result was a more organized and better managed university, shaped by what some critics depicted as a neo-liberal logic of efficiency. Professorial reaction was mostly negative, with one scholar expressing a preference for the Bologna of the eleventh instead of the twenty-first century (Tomusk Reference Tomusk2004). More recently though, fear of authoritarian regimes, not managerialism, has surfaced. The fear may be especially triggered by the authoritarian targeting of prominent American universities, the world-class rankings stars.

To varying degrees, American universities were earlier more managed and university presidents more celebrated as organizational leaders (Knight Reference Knight2023). To be sure, the growth of administration was often critiqued (Ginsberg Reference Ginsberg2011; Gerber Reference Gerber2014). However, in response to the targeting of universities, stronger leadership will be called for and that will surely not mean less organization. Staff layoffs are indeed taking place to cope with revenue losses (Unglesbee Reference Unglesbee2025). However, senior leadership, always more central to American universities, will become even more vital. Ideas about leaders captured by organizations cum iron cages will give way to searches for savvy leaders and leadership teams saving universities under siege. In the American context, the rationally managed university as an organizational actor will increasingly be imagined as key to its persistence. Whether European universities follow this path or continue to think of university leaders as primus inter pares may be determined by how much fear of threatening autocrats overrides earlier concerns regarding managerial logics. Whether faith in reason, and in the university as a citadel of reason, can be restored remains to be seen.