University of Oregon Launching ‘Environmental Justice Institute’

University of Oregon Launching ‘Environmental Justice Institute’

This effort ties climate change to racism. Because of course.

Oregon Live reports:

University of Oregon to start environmental justice institute after receiving $4.5 million grant

The University of Oregon is set to create an institute focusing on environmental and racial justice after receiving a grant of more than $4.5 million, the largest humanities award in the school’s history.

The Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice will foster collaboration between the university’s College of Arts and Sciences and College of Design along with the University of Idaho and Whitman College in Washington.

The grant came from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Oregon has a dark history of racial discrimination,” John Arroyo, professor of planning, public policy and management and director of the new institute, said in a statement. “This institute will build a bridge between statements and action toward achieving racial and climate justice on the (university) campus and across the Pacific Northwest, and offer a model for the rest of the country on addressing the most pressing issues of our time.”

Climate change has been shown to have a disproportionate impact on communities of color and people who depend on natural resources for their livelihood. Stephanie LeMenager, an English and environmental studies professor and co-organizer of the institute, said the initiative would focus on those issues.

“There are so many people at the (university) whose work centers on the fight for racial and environmental justice,” LeMenager said in a statement. “This institute will combine the imaginative and scholarly work of the humanities with expertise in policy, design and historic preservation to help communities around the Pacific Northwest.”

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