Middlebury College recently participated in World Climate and Justice Education Week, a global initiative of hundreds of educational institutions around the world to encourage conversations about climate change and justice across college campuses.
Initiatives at Middlebury included in-class teach-ins, climate-related events at Knoll, talks on climate anxiety, and a Holistic Future Circle series.
For the week of April 1-5, the university asked all faculty to devote at least five minutes of their class time to conversations about climate solutions and justice. At least 60 faculty members participated, according to the initiative's organizers Julia Belazneva, associate professor of economics, and Minna Brown, director of the climate action program.
Professor Middlebury also encouraged faculty to confirm their student participation and to take time to discuss climate justice in their participating groups.
The purpose of the teach-in was to get people talking about climate change across disciplines and among students.
“This global initiative allows us to participate in a movement larger than ourselves, while opening the door to course integration and strengthening and improving campus-wide efforts. Climate change is everything. ,” Brown wrote in an email to The Campus.
In addition to classroom efforts, the university held climate-conscious events last week, including Knoll Volunteer Hours and the 2024 Scott A. Margolin Environmental Issues Lecture.
Tara Federoff, sustainability expert at Hillcrest's Franklin Environmental Center;
organized the Holistic Future Circle event teach-in as another part of World Climate and Justice Education Week.
The goal of Holistic Futures Circles is to explore the concept of holistic sustainability, which Federov says is more than just climate justice. Self-care and community care are his two main pillars of a sustainable future and society, ideas that are reiterated in practice in both Knoll and Teach-In goals.
“The Knoll is an opportunity for students to engage in justice work, moving beyond ideas in the classroom to action in the garden,” said Andres Oyaga ’23, climate action coordinator for The Campus. I wrote by email.
With the concept of holistic sustainability in mind, Knoll cultivates relationships with the local Abenaki tribe by growing heirloom varieties of corn, beans, and squash that might otherwise become obsolete. I've built it. In 2019, Chief Don Stevens of the Nurhegan Abenaki Nation visited Knoll interns and farmers to share knowledge about Abenaki agricultural practices and food.
“Bringing indigenous knowledge and indigenous science into the conversation, empowering those experiencing the worst effects of climate change to take real action and providing a new perspective on the redistribution of power,” Federoff said. Told.
Holistic Futures Circles also aim to highlight the importance of Indigenous agricultural practices in sustainability and climate justice.
“Historically, settler colonialism has actually created an environment that is bad for overall sustainability, especially in the context of the United States,” Federoff said. “Co-production and co-management of knowledge from the ground up, rather than just consulting, is exactly what can move mountains.”
Mr. Brown also discussed inequality as a basis for the work in which the Climate Action Plan participates.
“Our work is based on the understanding that climate change is deeply unequal and unjust, and those least responsible are most at risk. It’s also racial justice, disability justice…it intersects deeply,” Brown wrote.
The week culminated with a talk entitled “Do we have a future?” Youth Climate Anxiety and Reproductive Futures,” by Jade S. Sasser, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Mr. Sasser shared research on the impact of climate change on emotional and mental health, with a particular focus on the despair and distress young people feel about climate change.
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Brown said he saw this desperate attitude reflected at Middlebury and emphasized the importance of creating space for these feelings.
“Through my role and teach-ins, I want students to see themselves reflected in climate action, reduce feelings of isolation and exclusion, and explore how their individual paths connect to climate action. I hope you understand,” Brown wrote.
The purpose of World Justice and Education Week at Middlebury is to educate and inspire, and for organizers, they did just that.
“We also offer a wide variety of ways to incorporate climate change into your courses, from learning climate change vocabulary in a foreign language to discussing the impact of computing on the environment to mapping temperature data into art for activists. We have also received very positive feedback from our wonderful teachers at Middlebury who have found different ways to do this,” Verazneva wrote.
