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Climate Justice Universities: Another Education Is Possible

A presentation from 2023–2024 Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow Jennie C. Stephens

Jennie C. Stephens is the Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. She is the author of “Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy,” which argues that effectively addressing the climate crisis requires diversifying leadership and redistributing wealth and power to move toward a more integrated, holistic transformative climate justice approach.

At Radcliffe, Stephens is completing her book manuscript, provisionally titled “Climate Justice University: Another Education Is Possible,” which reimagines how higher education could accelerate transformative social innovation toward a more just, healthy, and stable fossil fuel–free future. The book proposes a paradigm shift to leverage the untapped potential of institutions of higher education to advance systemic social change to reduce growing health inequities, economic injustices, and climate vulnerabilities.

Event Series Climate and Education Action Series

The Climate and Education Action Series: Dinner with Tara Houska

The Harvard College equity, diversity, and inclusion team is proud to have secured a Johnson Climate Action Grant, whereby we are exploring climate justice. We are hosting a series of events across the academic year that center the intersections of climate justice and empowering members of the College to engage in reflection and move to action. We are excited to invite a small group of College students to dinner with tribal rights attorney and founder of the Giniw Collective, Tara Houska, on Friday, November 3rd at 5:30 PM following the "Responsibility and Repair: Legacies of Indigenous Enslavement, Indenture, and Colonization at Harvard and Beyond Evening” led by the Harvard University Native American Program, in partnership with The Radcliffe Institute. Please follow this link to recommend students who might be particularly interested in attending and engaging with this dynamic leader on the power of her activism, and her inspiring impact.

Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability

Haller Hall 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust. It is also ubiquitous in the modern world, from aircraft to soda cans. Today, the efficiency with which we use—and reuse—aluminum is vital to addressing key environmental challenges and understanding humanity’s fraught relationship with the earth. In Soil to Foil (Columbia University Press, 2023), Saleem Ali tells the extraordinary story of aluminum.

Gender and climate change: an intersectional approach from Latin America and the Caribbean

Tsai Auditorium

Join a two-part event that aims to create a space for an overview of the intersection between climate change and gender—emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of its impacts in Latin America & the Caribbean—and to share efforts on how addressing gender disparities can enhance climate resilience, mitigation, and adaptation efforts.

Event Series Careers in Climate Action Speaker Series

Careers in Climate Action Speaker Series: Sanjay Seth on Careers in Government Climate Action and Equity

Harvard University Center for the Environment 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Interested in a career in climate and sustainability? This Fall semester, the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability is launching the Careers in Climate Action Speaker Series, featuring leading climate and sustainability practitioners — many of them Harvard alumni — from a broad range of industries and sectors.

Speakers will reflect on their work and career path, providing students from across Harvard with valuable insights needed to launch a climate career. Each event will include a one hour Q&A with the speaker followed by a dinner reception.

Colloquium Lecture: “Climate Change, Intergenerational Tyranny and Solar Geoengineering”

Colloquium Lecture Hall

Hear from Steve Gardiner, author of A Perfect Moral Storm (Oxford, 2011), and co-author of Debating Climate Ethics (Oxford, 2016) and Dialogues on Climate Justice (Routledge, in press). He is also the editor of Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Cornell, 2005) and the Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics (Oxford, in press), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (Oxford, 2016), Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford, 2010) and The Ethics of “Geoengineering” the Global Climate: Justice, Legitimacy and Governance (Routledge, 2020).

Application Deadline: OFS Data Analytics Student Position

The Harvard University Office for Sustainability (OFS) is seeking an energetic and enthusiastic student interested in a paid data analytics position for Academic Year 2023. In this paid internship, you will have the opportunity to gain experience in using analytics to inform sustainability strategy and to communicate progress towards key sustainability goals. 

Event Series Energy Policy Seminar

Energy Policy Seminar: “Synthesis of Evidence Yields Higher Social Cost of Carbon Due to Model Extensions and Uncertainties”

Harvard Kennedy School 79 John F. Kennedy St, Cambridge, MA, United States

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring Frances Moore, Associate Professor and the Hurlstone Presidential Chair in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California Davis. In a talk entitled "Synthesis of Evidence Yields Higher Social Cost of Carbon Due to Model Extensions and Uncertainties," Moore will present her recent research on the social cost of carbon in the context of U.S. government estimates and the recent proposed update from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Wild Life” Film Screening and Discussion

James Room, Schwartz Hall 45 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA, United States

Free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Join us for a public screening of Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's extraordinary film "Wild Life"—a story of love, wildness, and restoration in Chili and Argentina. The film follows conservationist Kris Tompkins on an epic decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting.

A discussion will follow the screening. Special guests include Kris Tompkins and Chai Vasarhelyi in conversation with guest curator Geralyn Dreyfous and HDS writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams.