{"id":5546,"date":"2021-08-01T21:01:32","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T21:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=5546"},"modified":"2021-07-23T22:04:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T22:04:07","slug":"for-life-work-politics-and-ecology-climate-justice-and-liberal-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/for-life-work-politics-and-ecology-climate-justice-and-liberal-education\/","title":{"rendered":"For Life, Work, Politics, and Ecology: Climate Justice and Liberal Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

[1] Over 10,000 youth from 22 countries surveyed by Amnesty International ranked climate change as the most important issue of our time.[1]<\/a> Teenagers in the United States make the same case.[2]<\/a> Increasing average temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and mass extinction associated with climate change threaten public health, water supply, food security, decent livelihoods, economic opportunities, and international relations. Further, \u201cclimate change disproportionately affects members of disadvantaged communities and groups who face socioeconomic inequalities, including many people of color.\u201d[3]<\/a> Another survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication thus finds what we would expect, that \u201cHispanics\/Latinos (69%) and African Americans (57%) are more likely to be Alarmed or Concerned about global warming than are Whites (49%). In contrast, Whites are more likely to be Doubtful or Dismissive (27%) than are Hispanics\/Latinos (11%) or African Americans (12%).\u201d[4]<\/a> Climate disruption, and the accelerating, devastating, and multiplying ecological and social impacts related to it, is one of the largest looming factors in our present and future.<\/p>\n

[2] The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) meanwhile released its guide for liberal education in What Liberal Education Looks Like: What It Is, Who It\u2019s For, and Where It Happens<\/em>.[5]<\/a> Its stated purpose is to \u201cclearly describe the learning all students need for success in an uncertain future and for addressing the compelling issues we face as a democracy and as a global community.\u201d[6]<\/a> Unfortunately, this learning, according to the 32-page document, while grounded in equity and inclusion in principle, doesn\u2019t involve engaging either anything ecological in general or climate change in particular. Based on this guide, the AAC&U\u2019s view of liberal education appears outmoded, and of limited relevance, upon publication. Climate disruption \u2013 its causes and effects, and the responses and transitions desperately called for in the face of its magnitude and consequence \u2013 is a major equity matter, and should deeply inform and shape the liberal education of young people today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n

[3] In what follows, I urge Lutheran colleges and universities to make climate justice \u2013 active \u201cresponsibility for the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the poorest and most vulnerable people in society by critically addressing inequality and promoting transformative approaches to address the root causes of climate change\u201d \u2013 central (alongside vocational preparation for life, workplace, and democracy) to the liberal education of their students.[7]<\/sup><\/a> Why? Lutheran educational communities understand themselves as places that \u201cequip graduates who are called and empowered to serve their neighbors so that all may flourish;\u201d and climate change is among the most serious threats to our neighbors, both human and non-human, and their flourishing. Liberal education, traditionally understood, is supposed to prepare students for three domains: life, workplace, and politics (i.e., sustaining our democracy). It\u2019s past time to add a fourth domain, namely, ecology (i.e., sustaining our world).<\/p>\n

[4] Lutheran colleges and universities can of course deal with any of their own respective blindspots concerning nature\u2019s ecosystems and climate change by simply adding the domain of human-Earth relations to their framings of liberal education. The learned dichotomy between our social and natural worlds, or our society\u2019s general disregard for and ignorance of other living species and the physical world, however, runs deep; we would have a lot to learn. Another challenge is that as Lutheran higher education responds to current demands made by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) activism on campus and beyond for racial justice and equity, potential disconnects (based on the learned dichotomy above) and competitive perceptions (zero-sum-game-views) \u2013 that any increase in institutional resources dedicated to engaging climate disruption entails a corresponding decrease in resources dedicated to racial progress \u2013 tend to put climate change on the back burner, no pun intended.<\/p>\n

[5] Just after the death of George Floyd, persistent protests inspired by Black Lives Matter combined with investigative journalism on the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on BIPOC communities across the United States forced many environmental and climate activists (those not necessarily identifying as either environmental or climate justice <\/em>activists) to reconsider the relation between racial justice and equity work on the one hand, and environmental stewardship and climate action on the other. They questioned themselves, for example, about connections between histories of redlining, pollution levels, heat islands, and public health (e.g. pre-existing respiratory conditions). Many have now concluded that major factors contributing to climate disruption and associated inequalities are rooted in the colonial oppression of Indigenous and Black communities, and the capitalist plundering and destruction of the environment.[8]<\/a> It\u2019s all of one cloth.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

[6] Below I set out some of what a few California Lutheran University (CLU) faculty in Thousand Oaks, California, are doing in relation to BIPOC activism to make climate justice central to CLU\u2019s general education (the core curriculum of its liberal education), informed by Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary\u2019s (PLTS is one of CLU\u2019s graduate schools) climate justice and faith program and comparable climate justice efforts at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) in Tacoma, Washington. Finally, I show one way the vision of Rooted and Open<\/em> can guide and support these and broader pursuits on combining racial justice and equity work on the one hand, and climate action and environmental stewardship on the other, to meet the challenges of potential disconnects and competitive perceptions.<\/p>\n

Reforming CLU\u2019s General Education<\/strong><\/p>\n

[7] This summer, CLU president Lori Varlotta charged CLU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Jessica Lavariega Monforti to lead a General Education (GE) Task Force. Varlotta references \u201cthe new normal\u201d for higher education as \u201cmany students and their families are struggling to discern what type of post-secondary education best prepares 21st century learners for the personal and professional changes, challenges, and opportunities that mark today\u2019s world.\u201d[10]<\/a> She continues, \u201cOur current core must evolve into a curriculum that is designed to help students find their vocation and their purpose…and live and work as engaged citizens who understand the intricacies and intersections ever-present in today\u2019s global society.\u201d According to the charge, the task force will \u201ccraft recommendations to create a new gen ed curriculum.\u201d The GE Task Force currently comprises six representative faculty members, and staff, students, and administrators. Immediately, leading Lutheran theologian and CLU Professor of Religion Lisa Dahill began organizing faculty already working together on other campus environmental and sustainability fronts.<\/p>\n

[8] In collaboration with faculty from Religion, English, Sociology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and PLTS, Dahill drafted a letter to the GE Task Force titled, \u201cCLU General Education: Centering in Climate Justice and a Livable Future for All,\u201d making a number of crucial points useful for our purposes. The letter calls on the CLU president and the GE Task Force to develop a general education modeled on PLTS\u2019s teaching and learning at the nexus of race, class, gender, and Earth that \u201cadvances students\u2019 adequate understanding and skills\/capacities for leadership toward local and global sustainability, resilience, innovation, environmental justice, and human\/interspecies survival befitting the urgent crisis we and the larger planetary community are facing.\u201d Selected whereas statements from the letter, quoted at length below, represent the collaborating faculty well, and parallel concerns expressed by BIPOC climate justice leaders.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

…WHEREAS climate change is the chief threat to the health, wellbeing, and continued existence of the most vulnerable humans on Earth, to entire forms of human civilization, to countless species facing imminent extinction, and to whole ecosystems and the patterns of climatic, hydrologic, and oceanic stability on which most forms of life on Earth depend; and<\/p>\n

WHEREAS Ventura County represents ground zero on numerous interlocking measures of climate change already affecting the university\u2019s functioning \u2013 a nexus of wildfire and temperature threats, desertification, economic impacts, and human suffering \u2013 while disrupting and destabilizing any lingering na\u00efve conception of what \u201cnormal life\u201d might henceforth be, thus also presenting a microcosm of global destabilization conducive to study of these phenomena; and<\/p>\n

WHEREAS the global exploitation of carbon resources driving this accelerating climate chaos is the result of historical and ongoing racist and colonial exploitation of people of color and their environments, in which those who have contributed least to climate change are most vulnerable to its effects, while those (largely white North Americans and Europeans) who have contributed most to climate chaos are least vulnerable, with the effect that climate upheavals both mirror and undergird all other forms of white supremacy; and<\/p>\n

WHEREAS CLU acknowledges that it is located on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Chumash peoples; recognizes that, as the original stewards of this land, the Chumash understood the interconnectedness of all things and maintained harmony with nature for millennia; and honors the Chumash peoples\u2019 enduring responsibility to care for Mother Earth; and<\/p>\n

WHEREAS young people across the world, especially BIPOC youth, recognize the threat these overwhelming and destabilizing upheavals pose to their futures and to the lives of all future generations, and both need and expect their elders, leaders, and institutions of all kinds to take the necessary and sacrificial action these interlocking crises demand; and…<\/p>\n

WHEREAS the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recognizes that climate justice is inseparable from social justice, that people of color and marginalized peoples are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation and climate change, and has repeatedly proclaimed its commitment to climate justice, care of creation, divestment from fossil fuels, and conversion to forms of life that honor all of God\u2019s creatures and cultures, future generations, and the planet itself; and<\/p>\n

WHEREAS CLU, as a university of the ELCA, is obligated to take seriously these climate-justice values which are indivisible from the university\u2019s commitments to racial justice, 21st<\/sup> century educational relevance, and moral leadership, and central to the university\u2019s mission; and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[10] Related endeavors at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) in Tacoma, Washington, can also contribute to reforming general education. PLU\u2019s mission \u201cto educate for lives of thoughtful inquiry, service, leadership, and care of others, their communities and the earth\u201d clearly includes environmental stewardship in a way that CLU\u2019s current mission \u201cto educate leaders for a global society who are committed to service and justice\u201d doesn\u2019t. PLU\u2019s Associate Vice President for Diversity, Justice, and Sustainability position laudably reflects this environmental stewardship value combined with the values of justice and diversity, together shaping the university\u2019s curriculum and practices according to their planning documents from 2010-2020. These values are also evident in PLU\u2019s environmental studies program, especially in its intersectional environmentalism and environmental justice collaborative online reading list, intended to provide PLU students, staff, and faculty with resources \u201cto engage with and take part in the kind of in-depth critical reflection, dialogue and, ideally, transformation that anti-racism and the climate change crisis call for and that our institutional commitment to diversity, justice, and sustainability, and our mission of care ask of us.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

[11] Another PLU demonstration of diversity, justice, and sustainability (DJS) values is the Environmental and Social Justice Floor in DJS Community in Ordal Hall, a community that \u201cseeks to create a safe, supportive, and diverse environment that challenges students to explore social and environmental justice issues and begin the work towards equity as engaged citizens on both local and global levels.\u201d[13]<\/a> It remains to be seen whether CLU will reform its general education along climate justice lines, and transcend the specific campus and broader cultural disconnects and competitive perceptions that make addressing racial equity on the one hand, and climate change on the other, a zero-sum game. As we put it above, it\u2019s all of one cloth. In the meantime, one key aspect of the vision of Lutheran higher education set out in Rooted and Open<\/em> can guide and support Lutheran college and university faculty, staff, and students hold the two together.<\/p>\n

Social and Ecological Embeddedness<\/strong><\/p>\n

[12] Rooted and Open<\/em> presents the common calling \u2013 \u201cto equip graduates who are called and empowered to serve their neighbors so that all may flourish\u201d \u2013 of\u00a0the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU), a calling in which they find their identity.[14]<\/a> Since \u201cneighbors\u201d is inclusive of both human and non-human species, and \u201call\u201d means all of life, the vision is comprehensive of the social and ecological. Based on the Lutheran theological root, an ecological metaphor, of God coming into the world as a human animal, Rooted and Open<\/em> makes such holistic concern an educational priority. In other words, Lutheran higher education understands individuals only in their social and ecological embeddedness. This is the key passage:<\/p>\n

The essential relationality of Lutheran theology believes that individuals flourish only as they are embedded in larger communities, families, civic spaces and ecosystems that are also empowered to flourish. Cherishing and protecting healthy communities go hand-in-hand with cherishing and protecting the well-being of individuals. In a dominant culture where goods are increasingly privatized and fought over, graduates of Lutheran institutions can consider the whole, creatively imagine mutual benefit, and work for the health of natural and human communities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here we see how Rooted and Open<\/em> can help Lutheran colleges and universities hold together racial justice and equity work on the one hand, and climate action and environmental stewardship on the other, and support making climate justice central to their general education. We also see why adding the fourth domain of ecology to liberal education\u2019s traditional domains of life, work, and politics is necessary.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

[13] To be sure, our democracy is in disrepair, and the AAC&U guide to liberal education rightly emphasizes the importance of its recuperation. A liberal education, according to the AAC&U, is \u201cto form the habits of heart and mind that liberate them and that equip them for, and dispose them to, civic involvement and the creation of a more just and inclusive society.\u201d A more just and inclusive society, though, involves working for climate justice, however daunting both climate realities (sciences and technologies) and social realities (structures and dynamics) might be. A relevant liberal education must prepare students for vocations generative of healthy and just forms of life, work, politics, and ecology \u2013 with all of these domains informed by BIPOC climate justice activists calling for the dismantling of white supremacy and implementing of just transitions. Let\u2019s start now by reforming Lutheran college and university general education, the core curriculum of our liberal education. Youth around the world insist we do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cClimate change ranks highest as vital issue of our time \u2013 Generation Z survey,\u201d Amnesty International, December 10, 2019. https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2019\/12\/climate-change-ranks-highest-as-vital-issue-of-our-time\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Nylah Burton, \u201cMeet the young activists of color who are leading the charge against climate disaster,\u201d Vox, October 11, 2019. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/identities\/2019\/10\/11\/20904791\/young-climate-activists-of-color<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Ballew, M., Maibach, E., Kotcher, J., Bergquist, P., Rosenthal, S., Marlon, J., and Leiserowitz, A. (2020). Which racial\/ethnic groups care most about climate change?. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https:\/\/climatecommunication.yale.edu\/publications\/race-and-climate-change\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Association of American Colleges & Universities, What Liberal Education Looks Like<\/em>, May, 2020. https:\/\/secure.aacu.org\/imis\/ItemDetail?iProductCode=E-WHATLELL<\/a><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/sup><\/a> Mandy Meikle, Jake Wilson, and Tahseen Jafry, \u201cClimate justice: between Mammon and Mother Earth,\u201d International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management<\/em> 8:4 (2016), p. 497.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Hop Hopkins, \u201cRacism Is Killing the Planet,\u201d Sierra Club Magazine<\/em>, June 8, 2020. https:\/\/www.sierraclub.org\/sierra\/racism-killing-planet<\/a><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> See the interview of Elizabeth Yeampierre in Beth Gardiner, \u201cUnequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change, \u201c Yale Environment 360<\/em>, June 9, 2020. https:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/features\/unequal-impact-the-deep-links-between-inequality-and-climate-change<\/a><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Email from the CLU Office of the President to all CLU faculty on June 29, 2021. Subject: \u201cLaunching our General Education Task Force.\u201d<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> See Gardiner\u2019s \u201cUnequal Impact\u201d above.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> See PLU\u2019s Intersectional Environmentalism and Environmental Justice Collaborative Reading List here: https:\/\/www.plu.edu\/environmental-studies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/103\/2020\/06\/reading-list_-instersectional-environmentalism_environmental-justice_june-2020.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> See PLU\u2019s themed learning communities here: https:\/\/www.plu.edu\/residential-life\/themed-learning-communities\/djs\/esj\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Rooted and Open: The Common Calling of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities<\/em> (Chicago: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 2018).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[1] Over 10,000 youth from 22 countries surveyed by Amnesty International ranked climate change as the most important issue of our time.[1] Teenagers in the United States make the same case.[2] Increasing average temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and mass extinction associated with climate change threaten public health, water supply, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-education"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFor Life, Work, Politics, and Ecology: Climate Justice and Liberal Education - Journal of Lutheran Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/for-life-work-politics-and-ecology-climate-justice-and-liberal-education\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For Life, Work, Politics, and Ecology: Climate Justice and Liberal Education - 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