There is ongoing debate about the legitimate roles universities play in society. There are some who only value the traditional functions of research, teaching, and service, even if their foci are not directly related to current societal challenges. In contrast there are others who argue for a greater involvement of universities in actively addressing the challenges society faces, even if it requires being active agents in political environments. Within the debate, there are many dialectical tensions that shape the identity of a university and its role: pure research or applied research; locally concerned or internationally aware; apolitical or politically savvy; academic freedom or beholden to national interests; technologically determined solutions or socially constructed outcomes. In this chapter, a middle ground is described in which universities can pursue a productive role in addressing the needs of their societies by being active players in contemporary geopolitics. While maintaining academic autonomy, universities can leverage soft power to help shape international relationships, but in an approach that is tempered by a balance amongst the dialectic tensions described. To achieve this middle ground, this chapter describes how universities who seek to demonstrate a value proposition to society in the geopolitical arena, can enable their aspirations through the way they align their governance, policy development, management models, investment decisions and evaluation loops in relation to the design of their university strategy.