In “Universities on Fire,” Bryan Alexander, a senior scholar at Georgetown University’s master’s program in learning, design, and technology, takes an unflinching look at how universities and their communities will be impacted by climate change, as well as what universities can do to both mitigate and adapt to a wide variety of climate impacts, from natural disasters to mental trauma.
Dr. Alexander is a futurist, so in “Universities on Fire,” he imagines different scenarios of what could happen up to and beyond the year 2100 if there is — or isn’t — a worldwide effort to stop carbon release. In particular, Dr. Alexander asks readers to consider the complex interplay of individual efforts, university-wide efforts, community efforts, and national and global approaches to climate: “Imagine a local or national government mandating strong climate mitigation laws. In response, some in the academic community resist. Or the reverse occurs as a passionately decarbonizing university collides with a crisis-denying regional government. Anti-immigration activists attack a college for teaching or hosting climate refugees.”
The future holds many dystopian possibilities, from the need to relocate universities due to rising seas to the potential closures of institutions that lose funding due to climate-related economic failures and deficits. Readers are also offered utopic outcomes, such as university campuses that are carbon-negative or carbon-neutral; humanities departments that have new inflections with the Anthropocene (our current epoch in which mankind is changing earth’s climate and ecosystems), including studies in “climate communication;” and fundamental transformations such as Donna Haraway’s vision in her book “When Species Meet” of a global rewilding and humans renegotiating their relationship with nature.
Yet this book isn’t entirely futuristic; Dr. Alexander points out that many universities are already responding to climate change. Examples include Pacific Union College, which has created a “conservation easement” and “firebreaks” to prevent wildfires from spreading; Washington College, which has constructed a flood wall; and countless universities that have adopted climate-aware course and program offerings, such as the urban environment, sustainability, and climate change program at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
One of the most poignant parts of “Universities on Fire” considers the psychological impact of climate change and how that impact will reverberate through the field of psychology. The American Psychological Association has already warned that climate-related disasters “have a high potential for immediate and severe psychological trauma from personal injury, injury or death of a loved one, damage to or loss of personal property (e.g., home) and pets, and disruption in or loss of livelihood.” Additionally, Dr. Alexander notes that new psychological frameworks and terms are already being formed around phenomena such as the dread of future climate shifts, or the nostalgia people might feel for the climate they experienced in the past.
Dr. Alexander charts some small and enormous ways that universities can react to climate change. Here are some ideas, from the smallest scale to the largest:
Modeling climate citizenship: Individual professors and administrators can model climate-conscious choices, such as bicycling when traveling short distances. From an academic standpoint, faculty and staff can incorporate climate issues and sustainability into their teaching, research agenda, and grant proposals.
Working within existing structures to advocate for changes: Every acting committee and group on campus has roles that it can play. Cafeteria staff can push for more locally produced foods to lower the energy spent on transportation. The technology committee can advocate for solar roof panels.
Forming new units and programs: Faculty and staff can advocate for the formation of a funded or unfunded unit that is focused on researching and suggesting climate and sustainability initiatives. In terms of programs, faculty and department chairs could begin by offering courses with a climate focus, and such courses could form interdisciplinary minors or majors.
Engaging in climate activism: Dr. Alexander writes that “faculty and staff [can act] as public intellectuals” or “[lobby] businesses and governments.” However, universities are required to report their lobbying activity, and so faculty and staff should consult with their institution’s legal counsel to make sure that they are within the bounds of the law when they are acting on the university’s behalf or using university resources for political aims.
Forming various private and public partnerships: Universities can collaborate on research, job training, and climate preparedness with a variety of partners, from small or large businesses to local governments and nonprofits.
Taking ethical stances: Institutions may change their mission statements to align themselves with certain climate goals. Endowments may divest from fossil fuel companies. Concerted efforts might be taken to cut down on excessive data usage. To make up for their energy consumption, universities might pledge enough funds toward carbon sequestration programs to become carbon neutral.
Transforming your institution: When an institution transforms its energy footprint, it sends a powerful message that massive change is attainable. Dr. Alexander writes, “Huge wind turbines, roads replaced with bike paths or lined with solar cells, new buildings that are net negative emissions and look very different from the rest, and so on can make a clear statement of an institution’s priorities.”
In some cases, if an institution drags its feet on climate issues, students may push for course and institutional changes. In a blog post, Dr. Alexander mentions how University of Barcelona students occupied administrative offices to demand that all students be required to take a course on climate change. The demand was met.
For faculty and administrators who are facing strained budgets and institutional inertia, Dr. Alexander advised in an email that “One way to proceed is by quietly offering climate change professional development to faculty, so they can infuse global warming into their preexisting classes. This is cheap to do (basically professional development funds at the provost’s level, plus assistance from teaching and learning centers, plus full-time climate scholars) and can fly under the radar. Another way is to win support from donors, either to offer explicitly climate-themed programs, such as through named chairs or dedicated centers, or to quietly support such work. Third, campuses might redirect resources from non-climate positions and programs to global warming ones, especially given retirements or enrollment drops in the former.”
When asked for the purpose of this review what surprised him most in his research for the book, Dr. Alexander replied, “I was surprised by the lack of climate denialism. Knowing how diverse academic opinion is, and how much we love to argue, I thought I’d get pushback on global warming’s reality. Never have. Instead, the thing which elicited the most active opposition (and some name-calling!) is…the idea of cutting back faculty travel.”
Overall, the institutions that incorporate proactive climate policies and research will be most able to survive and even thrive through our uncertain climate future. Already, research-intensive institutions have an edge. In their 2023 report, MECCE (Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education Project) and NAEE (North American Association for Environmental Education) found that 83% of the R1 institutions studied had included climate change content in their policies, compared to 32% of non-research-intensive institutions. Every category of institution stands to benefit from incorporating climate change preparation and mitigation into its programming and policies. Such work has the potential to make institutions more resilient and to strengthen local, private, and public partnerships.
