So let us forge a new social contract with society and with each other that will make us an exemplar of a great university in the 21st century. We wi… - Minouche Shafik

Technology because it has changed jobs and lots of people haven’t benefited. They have been left behind. They don’t have the skills and they are not in the right place, with the result that their prospects are poor. And the way our whole social contract was predicated on women looking after the young and the old for free – now there are more women going to university than men, globally, not just in the UK, and they are employed, and the cost of them not working is really high, so you want them to work. Yet we haven’t found a way to adjust – a way to look after the young and old without women providing free labour.

I’ve worked in a lot of different organizations, and that helps because you often have seen a similar problem somewhere else. Now, organizations all have their different cultures and histories, but it helps to have seen a similar problem. It makes you realize, “I can figure this one out, maybe, or there is a way to solve this puzzle.” The other thing is I’ve worked in a couple of organizations that manage crises, like the International Monetary Fund, or when I was with the Department for International Development, we managed a lot of humanitarian crises around the world. So that teaches you to be calm under stress, and I suspect that skill might be useful in the years ahead.

Free speech is the bedrock of academic inquiry and excellence. The threats it faces are real — many places ban books, curricula are sometimes determined by politicians rather than educational experts and scholars are at serious risk in many countries.