Are We There Yet? Can Universities Rebuild Trust in a Time of Conflict

Our research project, Are We There Yet? Universities in a Time of Conflict and Broken Trust asks what happens to a university's legitimacy when the communities it serves no longer feel heard and no longer feel safe at work. It also asks what universities can do to rebuild trust. 

Our research interrogates these matters in terms of organisational legitimacy. Mark Suchman distinguishes between pragmatic legitimacy (does this institution serve my interests?), moral legitimacy (is it doing the right thing?) and cognitive legitimacy (does it make sense, is it taken for granted?). We argue that while universities have traditionally drawn on all three, they can all be unsettled by global conflict. 

On that basis, we ask whether students and staff now question if their institution is truly protecting them or whether its responses are principled or reputational. Even more fundamentally, it asks whether they believe that the university they thought they worked for still exists in any meaningful sense.

The problem runs deeper than any single conflict. Over several decades, Australian universities have been reorganised around markets, performance metrics and revenue imperatives, a pattern that US scholars Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades call this academic capitalism. These changes have left universities structurally fragile. They are criticised for commercialising education and abandoning their public mission.

On the other hand, people complain that they are advancing politically or culturally illegitimate agendas. When conflict erupts, a corporatised university often reaches for the tools it knows best, such as risk management, communications strategy and reputation protection, but none of these are substitute for trust.

Rebuilding trust from within

Our study approaches trust and legitimacy by listening to the real experiences, thoughts and beliefs of academic staff. Key questions are:

• How have students experienced safety and belonging during this period?
• How have staff navigated teaching and speaking about contested issues?
• How do administrators weigh competing demands from different communities, government and the public?
• What do all of these groups believe a legitimate institutional response looks like?

The study aims to generate evidence-based strategies to help universities rebuild trust, strengthen resilience and support equitable participation for everyone on campus.

Too often, universities celebrate social cohesion as if it were a destination already reached. The evidence of the past three years suggests otherwise. Recovering public confidence starts with recovering the confidence of their own communities. That begins with listening.