A pathbreaking exploration of how higher education can advance transformative climate justice.

Amid the worsening climate crisis and intensifying inequities, higher education has a powerful role to play in addressing the intersecting crises facing humanity. Higher education holds huge untapped potential to advance social justice and reduce climate injustices, but universities are not yet structured to accelerate social change for the public good. In Climate Justice and the University, Jennie Stephens reimagines the potential of higher education to advance human well-being and promote ecological health.

Drawing on over thirty years of experience working on the climate crisis within higher education, Stephens offers provocative ideas and a pathbreaking vision for how higher education could accelerate the shift toward more equitable, healthy, and stable futures for all. Building on a US context, she also integrates examples from the innovative landscape of transformative education initiatives around the world.

With climate chaos exacerbating instability of all kinds, reimagining the transformative power of higher education is hopeful and empowering. By inviting readers to collectively reimagine different priorities and structures within higher education, Stephens disrupts long-held assumptions about how universities advance teaching and learning while building a more equitable future.

Jennie C. Stephens is a professor of climate science and justice at Maynooth University in Ireland and one of the first Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellows at Harvard University. She is the author of Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy.