Climate Justice, Fossil Fuel Phaseout, and Reimagining the Role of Higher Education

Presentation by Jennie C. Stephens, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. 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 (Island Press, 2020), 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 (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming), 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. This project of hope and possibility challenges complacency about how current university systems concentrate wealth and power, sustain fossil fuel reliance, and reinforce inequities and injustices. Stephens’s research on the climate crisis and energy system transformation has been supported by the Climate Social Science Network, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation. In addition to academic publications, Stephens has written for the Boston Globe, The Conversation, DAME, the Hill, and the Wall Street Journal.