The story
20th century
In an effort to establish a university to serve Sussex, a public meeting was held in December 1911 at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton to discover ways to fund the construction of a university; the project was halted by World War I, and the money raised was used instead for books for the Municipal Technical College.
The idea was revived in the 1950s, and in June 1958 the government approved the corporation's scheme for a university at Brighton, to be the first of a new generation of what came to be known as plate glass universities. The university was established as a company in 1959, with a Royal Charter being granted on 16 August 1961. This was the first university to be established in the UK since the Second World War, apart from Keele University. The university's organisation broke new ground in seeing the campus divided into Schools of Study, with students able to benefit from a multidisciplinary teaching environment. Sussex would emphasise cross-disciplinary activity, so that students would emerge from the university with a range of background or 'contextual' knowledge to complement their specialist 'core' skills in a particular subject area. For example, arts students spent their first year taking sciences while science students took arts.This experimental interdisciplinary educational model was famously described by Professor Asa Briggs as pioneering "a new map of learning".
The university grew from 52 students in 1961–62 to 3,200 in 1967–68. After starting at Knoyle Hall in Brighton, the Falmer campus was gradually built with Falmer House opening in 1962. The campus was praised as gorgeously modernist and groundbreaking, receiving numerous awards. The student union, as is typical, organised events and concerts, bringing in acts like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry to perform at the University Common Room.
Academically, Sussex was home to figures such as Asa Lord Briggs, Helmut Pappe, Gillian Rose, Christopher Freeman, Norman MacKenzie, Fernando Henriques, Jennifer Platt and Tom Bottomore. In its first years, the university attracted a number of renowned academics such as Sir John Cornforth, John Maynard Smith, Martin Wight, David Daiches, Roger Blin-Stoyle and Colin Eaborn. Similarly, renowned scholars like Marcus Cunliffe, Gabriel Josipovici, Quentin Bell, Dame Helen Wallace, Stuart Sutherland and Marie Jahoda also became central figures at the university and founded many of its current departments. Additionally, a number of initiatives at the university were started at this time, such as the Subaltern Studies Group, founded by Ranajit Guha who was Reader in History at Sussex between 1962 and 1981.
In the late 1960s, the United Nations asked for science policy recommendations from a team of renowned academics at Sussex. The ensuing report became known as the Sussex Manifesto.
Sussex came to be identified with student radicalism. In 1973, a group of students prevented United States government adviser Samuel P. Huntington from giving a speech on campus, because of his involvement in the Vietnam War. Similarly, when the spokesperson for the US embassy, Robert Beers, visited to give a talk to students entitled 'Vietnam in depth' three students were waiting outside Falmer House and threw a bucket of red paint over the diplomat as he was leaving.
In both 1967 and 1969, Sussex won the television quiz University Challenge.
In 1980, Sussex edged out the University of Oxford to become the university with the highest income from research grants and contracts.
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21st century
In an attempt to appeal to a modern audience, the university chose in 2004 to cease using its coat of arms and to replace it with the "US" logo.
In 2011, Sussex celebrated its 50th anniversary and saw the production of a number of works including a book on the university's history and an oral history and photography project. The university launched its first major fundraising campaign, Making the Future, and gathered over £51.3 million.
The university underwent a number of changes with the Sussex Strategic Plan 2009–2015, including the introduction of new academic courses, the opening of new research centres, the renovation and refurbishment of a number of its schools and buildings as well as the ongoing expansion of its student housing facilities.
In 2018, the university moved all of its investments out of fossil fuels (known as fossil fuel divestment) after a four-year student union run campaign.
In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sussex was one of few universities that returned to real-world teaching. Most lectures at other universities chose to remain online-only.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Sussex, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5