Fundamentally, leadership is the facilitation of betterment. In the context of sustainable development (SD), such betterment is interpreted as an on-going quest for inter-generational, inclusive, and integrated improvements in social equity and economic prosperity in ways which preserve ecological integrity. The sustainable development concept was introduced and defined in the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future), released in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). The hope, following its publication, was that leadership in both the public and private sectors of the world’s nations, would collaborate with each other and across the globe in the adoption of SD principles and associated practices. The substance and the scale of the intellectual and moral challenges presented by these principles and practices represented nothing less than a call for a shift in the dominant development paradigm. In turn, this also dictated the need for transformations of prevailing cultural worldviews and development discourse, as well as the redistribution of power relationships. There is little to suggest that the academy has risen to the challenge that this represents which, in turn, reflects missed opportunities both to contribute to the needed epistemic transformations as well as to reaffirming its relevance as a responsible institution. Current evidence with respect to persistent social inequities, faltering economies, and continuing ecological degradations across the globe, suggests that the necessary paradigmatic shift and associated intellectual and moral transformations, remain significantly incomplete. This is despite the renewed impetus of the identification and promulgation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations ‘Agenda 2030’. These matters are of central concern to institutions of higher education. The implications for their involvement extend considerably beyond their conventional functions of teaching and research to also embrace the scholarship of critical discursive engagement and collaborative leadership in pursuit of paradigmatic change.