Skip to main content

Why I’m Running For
Chancellor of Cambridge University

My Reasons for Running

To put it simply: Cambridge has given me so much, and it is time to give back.
View My Priorities If Elected Chancellor
View My Priorities

International relationships, finances and priorities are in flux. 

The global order which has prevailed throughout my life is fragmenting, with positions on issues spanning everything from geopolitics to climate change to personal identity becoming more and more polarised. New technologies present extraordinary opportunities to improve the human condition, but bring with them new and unfamiliar risks. To equip our societies and leaders to weather these great waves of change, we must urgently focus on building two things: knowledge and resilience. Universities must be places where people can disagree respectfully and build resilience through reasoned debate. That’s how knowledge advances and society grows stronger. 

The University of Cambridge is at the forefront of this approach, offering its people freedom of intellectual investigation and debate, and the extensive resources to support it. Against a backdrop of fierce competition, this position must be maintained and enhanced. 

The Chancellor’s role is one of responsibility, not power—to represent the university on the world stage, to uphold its core values of free speech and academic excellence, and to support its mission of advancing knowledge for the benefit of society. I have spent almost sixty years in service of organisations across the worlds of business, academia, the arts, the public sector and philanthropy – and now wish to dedicate myself to serving Cambridge. 

If elected, I would bring all my experience to bear on the great challenges and opportunities facing Cambridge.  From my time as Co-Chairman of the UK’s Council on Science and Technology, I understand the importance of secure funding for scholarship and research. I have seen at first hand the value of translating discoveries into commercial enterprises, ensuring that great advances in knowledge are deployed effectively and for the benefit of society. And having spent my life in the global energy business – currently as Chairman and Co-founder of BeyondNetZero, a fund which invests in accelerating the energy transition – I know what it takes to balance seemingly irreconcilable points of view. Cambridge’s ability to bring the humanities and social sciences together with fundamental science and engineering means that it has a unique opportunity to play a crucial role in securing humanity’s future. 

To achieve the breakthroughs which are needed, Cambridge must maintain access for all based on ability. Life as a student or a young academic can be lonely, stressful and financially demanding. The University’s ability to attract and support the world’s brightest minds, wherever they come from, is a crucial measure of its continuing success. 

Throughout my career, I have learnt how to shape debates and to influence others rather than asserting power through the authority of a title. I’ve built relationships around the world, in business, science, the arts and diplomacy. I’ve helped raise over half a billion pounds for some of the world’s leading cultural and academic institutions. I know how to connect Cambridge to the world, and to bring the world to Cambridge. This is a chance to dedicate myself to the university that gave me so much. To help pass on the benefits of Cambridge to the next generation would be a privilege. Assisting Cambridge to remain one of the world’s greatest universities would be an honour. 

Lord John Browne at St Johns College standing amongst his peers, where he studied during his time at Cambridge University.

At St John’s College, Cambridge in the 1960s.

My Connection to Cambridge

Cambridge has always been my anchor. I grew up and went to school there. I read physics at St John’s College. It was my mother’s first permanent home in the UK after she was liberated from Auschwitz.
Lord John Browne in his youth standing alongside his mother, Paula Browne, and father, Edmund Browne.

At home in Cambridge in the 1970s.

My time at Cambridge shaped who I am — not just intellectually, but personally. It gave me lifelong friends, taught me how to think critically and gave me the courage to accept myself in a time when being different wasn’t easy. I was in the closet because homosexuality had only recently become legal, but that did not stop me from learning to appreciate and celebrate Cambridge’s diversity of background, behaviour and opinion. Today, enhanced by my own much later experience of being ‘outed’, I have a profound determination to give opportunities to those with ability, regardless of their background, creed or sexual orientation. 

Cambridge has been a huge influence on my life. It instilled in me a deep respect for open debate and intellectual curiosity. 

And I have maintained academic, commercial and charitable connections with Cambridge throughout my life. I fund scholarships at Murray Edwards College in my mother’s name. She cared enormously about granting women equal access to opportunity, because it was something that was denied to her. She would have been so pleased to be associated in this way with Cambridge. 

I am deeply honoured to have been encouraged to stand for election to the Chancellorship by so many distinguished Cambridge alumni and academic leaders. It’s a city which has served me so well, and by standing for the role of Chancellor of Cambridge University, I am committing myself to serving Cambridge – the place which gave me and my parents so much in life. 

I would have four very simple but consistent guiding priorities as Chancellor.

View my priorities if elected chancellor
How to vote