Instead of a politics of divide and conquer, we can choose collaboration; instead of scarcity narratives, we can seek abundance and equity, Leonie H. Mattison writes.
Leadership in higher education today carries a burden that defies simple explanation. It is not only the fatigue of navigating political volatility or the pressure of constrained resources; it is a quieter and more corrosive strain that scholars call moral injury, the inner conflict that arises when one’s role requires choices that violate personal and professional values. Unlike burnout, which exhausts, moral injury disorients. It fractures the conscience and disconnects leaders from the sense of purpose that once anchored their calling and service.
Since 2024, a convergence of pressures has intensified moral injury in higher education: waves of state bills restricting teaching, hiring and institutional autonomy; crackdowns on protest and social media speech; overreach by board members and political figures who substitute ideology for fiduciary judgment; austerity, closures and the reliance on contingent labor; regulatory whiplash around Title IX; executive action on restructuring Public Service Loan Forgiveness; overwhelmed mental-health capacity; expansion of surveillance and virtual proctoring tools with associated bias risks; international student visa revocations; and everyday mission-versus-metrics conflicts where rankings eclipse belonging and learning.
Amid all this, the White House announced a federal policy move last month that landed as a fresh blow to the sector: the proposed reallocation of federal funds that would end discretionary grant programs for minority-serving institutions, including Hispanic-serving institutions, and shift millions of dollars toward historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges instead. This move has left many Latino leaders and students feeling excluded from the nation’s educational promise.
I felt this decision deeply. This is the kind of moment that stirs complex emotions because it sets communities in tension with one another, shifting the focus away from the real issue of equitable investment in all students. This policy shift is not about HBCUs versus Hispanic-serving institutions; both have been historically underfunded. Framing it as a zero-sum game risks reinforcing inequitable systems by keeping communities in competition rather than in coalition.
It is also a form of moral injury. When decisions pit communities against one another, they compromise the very values leaders aspire to uphold, including equity, justice and belonging. For those of us who have dedicated our lives to advancing these values in higher education, witnessing this dynamic is more than a policy frustration. It unsettles the conscience, which is why it strikes so deeply.
This pattern appears frequently, and it can wear down leaders and communities because many have witnessed similar dynamics repeated in boardrooms, policy debates and resource allocations. Scarcity narratives are not truths: They are frames, and when leaders rely on them, they obscure the shared work of building equity. Perhaps this difficult moment can also remind us of what we have been standing for all along: an ethic of abundance and investment in wholeness across the board. That perspective is needed now more than ever.
Boards are fiduciaries, yet fiduciary duty includes safeguarding academic freedom and institutional integrity, which is why the American Association of University Professors’ guidance on political interference and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges’ tools for trustees are critical guardrails when partisan aims pressure decisions. Campus safety is nonnegotiable, but rights-based responses may protect communities more reliably than punitive crackdowns.
In speaking with leaders today, we hear a language of betrayal: “I’m being asked to do harm,” “We sold out our values,” “I can’t protect my team or my students.” Let’s be mindful: Humans are wired for safety and for connection. When that wiring is threatened, the nervous system narrows its window of tolerance, pushing leaders toward hypervigilance or emotional numbing. These are not mere performance issues; they are the body keeping score of moral dissonance. As Bessel van der Kolk shows in The Body Keeps the Score, the nervous system records what the mind cannot reconcile; disrupted sleep, constricted affect and a loss of relational presence are somatic signals that one’s integrity has been pushed out of alignment and needs care, voice and repair.
I’ve been thinking about how the absence of grief rituals within academia deepens the harm. There are differences between grief as the interior ache of loss, mourning as the communal expression of grief and grievance as the formal pursuit of remedy. Too often, institutions mute grief, skip mourning and politicize grievance. When diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructures are dismantled or beloved programs cut without acknowledgment, entire communities remain in the limbo of ambiguous loss. Disenfranchised grief, such as loss that goes unrecognized, festers in silence and corrodes both leaders and communities.
Movements such as The Weight We Carry, launched by a Purple Heart recipient to raise awareness of moral injury across sectors, remind us that healing does not happen in isolation. It requires shared language, collective witnessing and systems that turn lament into action. Healing moral injury requires both ritual and remedy. Rituals create space to pause, name harm and mourn what has been lost. Remedies realign policies, budgets and governance with stated values, including principled board practice and ethical budgeting that centers equity. One without the other is incomplete: Ritual without remedy becomes performance, and remedy without ritual becomes brittle.
The T.H.R.E.A.D. System, a leadership model I developed, offers one such path forward. The E in T.H.R.E.A.D.—Enlist Allies—is indispensable. A leader needs personal allies such as therapists, spiritual companions and truth-telling mentors; institutional allies such as board and cabinet members who protect their voice; and community allies, including students, faculty, alumni and civic partners, who hold institutions accountable with care. Additionally, the Moral Injury and Distress Scale can be used confidentially to screen for injury.
My own healing journey taught me that one way through moral injury is to liberate the wound through creativity. One ancient practice I encourage is quilting or tapestry making. Quilting invites people to stitch stories, memories and fragments of experience into something coherent and beautiful. It is a craft of meaning-making and communal memory, reconnecting us with ourselves, each other and nature. On many campuses, faculty, students, trustees and alumni could sit together, piece by piece, to name what has been lost and what must be protected. Creativity does not replace policy; it prepares us to make policy with integrity.