Professor Arvanitakis also found that the broader public often sees universities as disconnected from the community. This has been driven in part by ‘shock jocks’ who often describe universities as ‘ivory towers’ and have undertaken a systematic undermining of science, especially around climate change debates.

“Unfortunately ‘shock jocks’ have become the new public intellectuals, often spreading unsupported rumours around issues such as climate change, refugees and economics, twisting the facts to grab attention,” he says.

“It is time that the university community better connected with the broader public and confronted untruths.”

The role for universities is to st