University leaders should not take student protests personally and should focus on creating a campus atmosphere where disagreements can happen safely and fairly, scholars have?said.

Rajani Naidoo, vice-president and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter, said?freedom of speech in the UK has become increasingly contested?in an age of polarised politics, which has been amplified by social media.

Speaking at the Going Global conference, she said universities are being asked to reconcile laws, values and expectations?that sometimes pull in opposite directions and often collide.

Although freedom of expression is protected by law, so are protections against harassment and discrimination, she highlighted. Gender critical expression is a protected belief, but trans identity is also protected under equality law. And?while right to protest is protected, so too is the right to study and work free from disruption.

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¡°Holding these tensions productively, not erasing the conflict, not repressing the conflict, but living with it. Our role as a university leadership is to hold that space where disagreements can happen safely and fairly,¡± Naidoo said.

The professor of higher education and social change said her colleagues have had to?navigate sensitive and politicised issues linked to climate protests, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and debates about gender identity in recent years ¨C and have done so without calling in the police, arresting students or letting tensions spill over.

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The leadership team had learned not to take protests personally, she said.?¡°It¡¯s not us as a person; it¡¯s a role that¡¯s being attacked and so we really try to see protesters not as threats to order but as members of our community who are motivated by conscience.¡±

Naidoo said differences should not be feared but valued, and that disagreements should never be hostile.

¡°The years ahead are not going to get any easier. It¡¯s going to get more and more and more difficult. Some governments are going to be using the freedom of speech, regulation and laws as weapons.

¡°And I think we as universities have to be really clear what it means for us, and we have to take hold of that and really make it our own.¡±

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Andr¨¦ Keet, deputy vice chancellor for engagement and transformation at Nelson Mandela University, said universities should move away from the idea of balancing principles of academic?freedom on the one hand and equality, diversity and inclusion on the other.

Instead, they should acknowledge that diverse interests are a social and organisational reality within universities, he told delegates at the British Council event.

¡°This shift recognises that the permanent presence of tensions between free speech and inclusion, between critique and care, between different visions of justice, isn¡¯t a bug in the university system that needs to be fixed. It¡¯s its future.

¡°These tensions are constitutive of who we are, what universities are as complex social institutions developed in contested societies.¡±

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patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com