Guest editorial: The university as an arena for sustainability transition

The year 1968 was a momentous year of spontaneous rebellion around the world. Throughout that year, a wave of protests by environmental, civil rights, anti-war and pro-equality movements swept the world (Kurlansky, 2005). A disproportionally large number of these protests was organised or supported by university students (Werenskjold, 2010), culminating in, e.g. the “May event” in France or the “Tlatelolco massacre” in Mexico. Environmental movements, civil rights movements, anti-capitalist and anti-communist movements, and other emancipatory movements that are concerned with what we now call sustainable development, can trace their origins or rallying point to 1968 (Klimke and Scharloth, 2008). Paradoxically, this revolt may have destabilised progressive politics while unifying conservatives, paving the way for the current global neoliberal clamp-down (Ferhat, 2019; Harvey, 2007; Hilton, 2016).