1 1 Lessons in struggle, studies in resistance Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally While the commodification of education and the spectre of the corporate university (private and public) haunts, and has indeed materialised in many locations, many campuses remain sites of struggle, whether erupting, dormant or under the radar. Over 50 years have passed since the 1968 wave of rebellion reverberated around the world against authoritarian rule, war and colonialism when students, often alongside workers, organised mass protests, sending shockwaves of alarm among political, economic and military elites (Dubinsky, Krull, Lord, Mills & Rutherford, 2009; de García, 2005; Pensado, 2015; Vrana, 2017). Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s – and since – in Thailand, Pakistan, South Korea, Iran and other parts of Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Pacific, campuses have frequently erupted in protest. At the start of the twenty-first century, struggles within higher education continue in the context of deep social and economic inequalities, global ecological and capitalist crises, multiple forms of state violence and repression, demands for rethinking the framework and purpose of formal education and universal access to free quality education (on recent student movements, see, for example, Brooks, 2017; Ferguson, 2017; Hensby, 2018; Myers, 2017; Solomon & Palmieri, 2011; Weiss & Aspinall, 2012; Zamponi, 2018). Demands for institutional change, and calls to decolonise (however this term is defined) institutions, programmes of study and curricula have spread across campuses and countries (Bhambra, Gebrial & Nişancıoğlu,