When does peace matter? global crises and European higher education governance from 2000 to 2025

This article examines how global crises and longer-term transformations between 2000 and 2025 have reshaped the governance responsibilities attributed to European higher education. Focusing on the European Union (EU) and the wider European Higher Education Area (EHEA), it develops governing for peace as an analytical concept for tracing how the conditions of peaceful coexistence enter policy expectations of universities. Drawing on historically informed qualitative policy analysis, the article examines six overlapping contexts including Europeanisation and globalisation; insecurity; economic crisis; forced migration; the COVID-19 pandemic and renewed geopolitical conflict. The findings reveal recurring tensions among institutional purposes. These tensions challenge any account of a cumulative movement towards peace-oriented governance across the period under examination. The financial crisis intensified an established economic agenda, while forced displacement renewed commitments to inclusion. Pandemic responses connected educational continuity with contested expertise and public communication. Since 2022, research security and proposals concerning civilian and military applications have sharpened tensions between openness, protection and defence. National funding and regulation mediate these priorities, while universities and sectoral networks adapt and contest them. Peace-related responsibilities therefore vary across policy settings; limited documentary visibility cannot establish declining institutional authority or practice. The article distinguishes university peace-related activities from commitments reshaping institutional governance expectations and recognises that documentary evidence cannot establish peaceful outcomes.