A new book recognizes colleges dedicated to the well-being of the Earth

What is a climate justice university, and how can our universities transform into institutions that truly promote the well-being of the world and humanity? New book by Jennie C. Stephens, Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for Everyone (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), sets out to answer that question. It reveals where today’s universities are failing to address not only the climate crisis but also a wealth of other modern social problems.

This book puts forward broad ideas for changing the way universities work in society, such as changing research processes to work with people and communities affected by problems, such as the climate crisis, at the center of that research. Stephens, who is a professor at both the National University of Ireland Maynoonth and Northeastern University, admits in the introduction that such a change would be a huge undertaking, and one that many universities would be reluctant to undertake. “Given the internal pressure in higher education to maintain institutional norms, this book and its proposal for climate justice universities are, in a sense, radical acts of resistance,” he wrote.

In the phone conversation, Stephen talked to him Within Higher Ed about his vision of climate justice universities—and how modern institutions are failing to meet them. The discussion is edited for length and clarity.

Q: It was interesting to learn that your perspective on these issues comes from your academic career and the time you have worked on the administrative side of education. Can you explain how those experiences came together to inspire this book?

A: I’ve worked in academia my entire career—over 30 years—and during that time, I’ve focused on climate and energy issues and sustainability from a social justice perspective. What has happened in my experience over time is that I see part of the inadequate public response to the climate crisis is seen in academics.

I think higher education has a really big role in society—in what we do and don’t do, in how we teach and learn, in what we research and what we don’t research. over—and I think our inadequate collective response to the climate crisis is related to what has been happening in our institutions of higher education, which are increasingly underfunded. They are driven by profit-seeking priorities and new technologies and startups and focus on vocational training. We have moved from a mission to help the higher education community: What does the community need in this difficult time, and how can our institutions of higher education better respond to the needs of the community, especially vulnerable and disadvantaged communities and individuals and households who are increasingly struggling with all forms of insecurity and vulnerability?

Question: How would you define the term “climate justice university”?

A: The concept of a climate justice university is a university with a mission and purpose to create a healthy, equitable, sustainable future for everyone. So, that’s a great community service. The idea is to combine the climate crisis with all the other injustices and … many different problems that are happening right now; weather is just one of many. We also have the cost of living; we have mental health problems, we have financial problems; we have a plastic pollution problem and a biodiversity problem; we have a crisis in international law and a military crisis. We have all this chaos, and yet what we do in our universities is to continue to cover up and try to fix parts of the problems, rather than admit that these problems are symptoms of larger systemic challenges.

For me, climate justice is a shift towards a dynamic lens, acknowledging that things are getting worse and worse in many places, and that if we want a better future for humanity and communities around the world, we really need a bigger, more flexible one. change. Many of the things we do in our universities reinforce the status quo and do not encourage or mandate radical change. Therefore, climate justice is a paradigm shift with a flexible lens that focuses less on individual behavior, more on collective action, less on technological change, more on social change, and less on profit-seeking priorities, more on welfare priorities. What do people need to live meaningful, healthy lives, and how can society focus on that?

Question: Can you talk more about how the current structure of the university maintains the status quo in relation to climate?

A: One of the ways that I think universities are perpetuating the status quo is not realizing what a disturbing time we are in not only about the climate crisis, but other problems as well. There is an encouragement on many campuses to be complacent, like, “Oh, the world is like this.” It is not necessary to encourage students and researchers to imagine an alternative future.

There is also a focus on doing research that billionaires or corporate interests want us to do, and—especially in the climate area—this has led to a lot of climate and energy research funded by big corporations and other wealthy donors. they really don’t want change. We have more research to show who is blocking climate action and climate change so we can have a more sustainable climate future. We know that many of those same companies and similar fuel interests have also invested very strategically in our universities. What that does is push research and public discourse about climate and the future of energy into the future of fossil fuels.

Early in my career, I worked on fossil fuel industry-sponsored projects on carbon capture and storage, and a lot of climate and energy research at our universities focuses on carbon capture and storage, carbon removal technologies, geoengineering—all these technological fixes that assume we’re going to continue using fossil fuels. What we really need, if we had more climate justice universities focused on public policy and what climate science has been telling us for decades, is to get rid of coal. We need global action to end fossil fuels. But in our universities we don’t have much research on how to get rid of natural oils.

Q: In your book, you discuss the concept of decommissioning—the process of eliminating ineffective or dangerous technology. Why is archaeological research still so rare in higher education, and what are the main obstacles for researchers who want to take this path?

A: I think funding has a lot to do with it. There is a whole chapter in the book on the financing of higher education institutions, which has resulted from the decline of public support to the increased support of the private sector, which means that universities are beholden to the private sector, increasingly, and encouraged. and being encouraged to accommodate and cooperate with … private sector interests. I think that really changed the kinds of influence that institutions of higher education and research had.

Of course, there are many people within universities who are interested in the public good and who do research in archaeology. But the incentive structure, even among those of us who would like to contribute in those ways, is that we are increasingly motivated and encouraged based on how much money we can bring in, how many papers we can get and the level of resources. available for research. Therefore, there is a large, long-term strategy to guide research on technical fixes, especially when it comes to climate and energy, and very little funding available for social change or management research on how to restore social priorities. our policies, our funding, our universities. It is a really long-term trend that has led to this investment.

Q: You put forward many other ideas for funding universities, which is important considering that funding concerns are at a high level in some institutions. I took you through some of your ideas and talked about the possibility of restructuring the way universities are funded.

A: One idea in the chapter about new ways to engage and be more active is what if we thought of higher education institutions as public libraries? Public libraries, we all see as important resources for everyone; every community should have some access to a public library. What if higher education could be like that [better] invested in that sense of being a resource and not being an ivory tower that’s really hard to get into and only some privileged people get access to? What if our higher education institutions were designed and funded to provide accessible and relevant services, built in partnership with communities? That’s kind of one of the big ideas to think about what this really important resource can be that is more important and more connected to the needs of society and communities.

You also asked about possibilities, and one of the things I want to point out is that this book is not a how-to; All states and regions and different places in the world have different things going on with their higher education institutions. The idea behind this book is to invite us all to think about what is the purpose of higher education institutions? And how can we make the best use of all the public investment that has been spent on higher education institutions? How can that be directed towards a better future for everyone?

For higher education institutions that feel very vulnerable, with many concerns about funding levels—the ideas in this book do not provide a prescription for how to fix that in the near term. But the ideas in this book are meant to encourage all of us—especially those involved in higher education policy and higher education funding—to reexamine and reclaim the public benefit of higher education and to rethink how to restructure higher education so that value and resources are more accessible, more relevant and more transformative. , in accordance with the needs of the most disturbing time for humanity and communities and communities throughout the country and around the world.