My Priorities If
Elected Chancellor
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.

At St. John’s College.
I would have four very simple but consistent guiding priorities as Chancellor.
1. Sustaining the University’s long-held values
Uphold the university’s defining values of free speech, intellectual freedom, fact-based analysis, and freedom from discrimination. It is all too easy to backslide, so we must never take these values for granted.
2. Representing Cambridge
Locally, nationally and on the world stage. I’ve spent six decades in business, academia and government doing this in service of a wide range of organisations – and it’s time to do the same for Cambridge.
3. Safeguarding excellence
Helping to ensure that Cambridge can attract and support the brightest minds, wherever they come from, and give them a world-class experience as students, scholars or researchers. As someone who has seen prejudice and discrimination firsthand, I am determined to help give opportunities to those with ability, regardless of their circumstances. This is a crucial measure of the University’s continuing success.
4. Championing the role that Cambridge plays in service of society
Identifying and championing the role that the university’s scholarship and research can play in tackling the great global challenges of our time. Cambridge’s ability to bring the humanities and social sciences together with fundamental science and engineering means that it can play a crucial role in the defining issues of the future.

With Dorothy Byrne, President of Murray Edwards College.
The Chancellorship is about responsibility, not power. This is not an executive role — it’s about representing Cambridge on the world stage, upholding its core values and offering strategic counsel when required.
My own Cambridge education has guided me, not only in business, but also in chairing and fundraising for the likes of the Crick Institute, the Tate, the Courtauld, and the British Museum. 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.