Jennie C. Stephens is a scientist, academic, feminist and provocative thinker. With a PhD from Caltech in Environmental Science and Engineering, along with decades of faculty appointments, Stephens knows about energy systems and the move from old to new technologies. The focus of her latest book, Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for All, does not draw from that expertise. It is not about the nuts and bolts of climate and technology. Nor is it an exercise in how universities might participate in small reforms to lessen their carbon impact. Instead, Stephens has a very ambitious goal. She wants to explore how “higher education systems could be reclaimed and restructured to better prepare society for a more hopeful future.” Stephens argues that universities have a tremendous untapped potential to facilitate transformative change. Climate Justice is a work of critical universities studies, a critique of higher education and its relationship with power. Stephens’ aim in writing the book is to create dialogue and spark imagination.
Stephens sees much wrong with current practices. She argues that universities “leverage selective knowledge to concentrate wealth and power to reinforce climate injustices,” noting that these institutions are “rooted in patriarchy, racism, capitalism and coloniality.” This is unacceptable for Stephens, who wants to see deep changes. For such transformations to occur, Stephens calls for “unlearning” the traditional ways that universities curate and disseminate knowledge. Acknowledging and respecting peoples’ common understanding is an example of this work. Stephens follows this up with a call for exnovation research – how to phase out technologies and practices that work against climate justice. It is possible, Stephens believes, if universities were to act with more appreciation of people and forces outside the ivy tower. Funding and support for these new kinds of institutions could be possible, she imagines, if higher education internally and its external funding sources were to rethink what generosity might mean. She sees the financialization of higher education as contributing to many of today’s problems. Resisting this, accordingly, is important if higher education might become a collaborative, worker-owned model. Community collaboration is an additional component to the effort. Lastly, Stephens argues that as a public good, a network of global universities might offer a new way to usher in a new future.
One of the often underappreciated features of higher education is that despite the many pressures on it to enforce common thinking, it can still support critics like Stephens. Admittedly, Stephens’ book highlights some of the serious challenges she has faced in her professional life. Nonetheless, she has a faculty appointment in Ireland and she is an active scholar. Her ideas and criticisms strike at much of what higher education does and the values and structures that support it. Reading Climate Justice, consequently, forces one to think about the how’s and why’s of higher education at the broadest level.
For example, if higher education does not fund basic research, who does? And how and where does higher education get the long-term support to do so? Throughout the world, those resources tend to come from government, from industry, and occasionally the very wealthy. Interrogating those relationships – especially today – is vital. Whether or not one agrees with Stephens, her questions necessarily catalyze inquiry.
My take on higher education, after reading of Climate Justice, surprised me. Stephens’ complaints gave me ever greater appreciation for the extraordinarily difficult paths that universities tow. Robust criticism comes from all sides. It is the nature of the beast. Accordingly, while I find much to critique in Climate Justice, I see it as a useful addition to the ever-growing shelf of works attacking academia today.
One final point that has also become increasingly clear to me. Be it an R1 with a healthy endowment, a struggling tuition dependent liberal arts college, or a community college, all of higher education is dependent upon systems and structures that have grown over many decades. Bearing in mind federal financial aid for tuition to tax-exempt status to expectations from alumni, employers, students, parents and elected officials, institutions of higher education are beholden to so many. Higher education is rarely, if ever, an independent actor. Higher education may have great intellectual and cultural capital, they do not necessarily translate to worlds of politics and finance. We might all do well to remember, particularly when calling out the “should” and “ought” that universities and colleges have limited agency.
David Potash