Book Review: The Palgrave handbook of crisis leadership in higher education
Authors: Tang Fiona Xiaofei 
Published: January 2025

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was working in a public university in Wuhan, China. As the global crisis unfolded, I saw firsthand how higher education institutions responded to unprecedented disruptions. With the urgent shift to emergency remote teaching, challenges in institutional governance, and widespread uncertainty of the pandemic’s trajectory, academic leaders and community faced enormous pressures. My own experience of being confined to China during this period afforded me a unique perspective on how institutions struggled to maintain educational continuity while managing the multifaceted challenges of the crisis (see Tang & Liu, 2022). These observations deepened my understanding of crisis leadership in higher education, especially as it pertains to institutional adaptability, resilience, and the strategic foresight required to lead our way through crises effectively.
While crisis leadership can be viewed through many lenses, I find the framework proposed by the editorial team of The Palgrave Handbook of Crisis Leadership in Higher Education – Dr. Jürgen Rudolph, Dr. Joseph Crawford, Dr. Choon-Yin Sam, and Shannon Tan – particularly compelling; not mentioning that the editors are all multi-disciplinary experts and frontline academics in management, leadership, higher education policy and practices. They argue that crisis leadership in higher education is not always tied to formal titles or positions of authority. Instead, it revolves around the actions of individuals at every level – those who step up, influence, and inspire positive responses during times of crisis (Rudolph et al., 2024, pp. 7-8). Whether it was pivoting to online platforms overnight or supporting faculty and students through the emotional and logistical upheaval of lockdowns, the need for strategic, compassionate, and agile leadership became clear. At its core, true crisis leadership is about cultivating an environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute, creating a sense of psychological safety, and transcending the traditional boundaries of institutional hierarchies.
It is within this framework that I approached this edited book. This timely volume addresses a broad range of crises – financial, political, environmental, and technological – and presents global case studies that offer critical insights into leadership strategies. As someone who has witnessed the direct impact of crises on higher education. I found the thematic structure of this handbook especially relevant. Each chapter rigorously explores the intersection between crisis leadership and institutional survival, demonstrating how crises like the COVID-19 pandemic or those brought upon by generative artificial intelligence (AI) serve not only as challenges but also as potential catalysts for innovation and systemic reform.
In addition to the opening chapter, this handbook encompasses nine thematic chapters (Chapters 2-10) and 23 chapters that explore global case studies (Chapters 11-33) featuring some underrepresented countries or regions in the established literature such as Cambodia, Ghana, Papua New Guinea, and Uzbekistan. The topics that contributors have delved into are structured around leadership models, financial sustainability, digital transformation, social justice and equity, global and regional responses, and environmental sustainability. Due to its exhaustive content, this handbook would be of great interest to academic researchers, teaching practitioners, policy makers, institutional leaders as well as a broader international audience who seek a thorough and practical reference for future crisis handling in higher education.