Paper short abstract:

Many universities have proclaimed a staunch commitment to the notion of sustainability in their stated commitment to furthering knowledge and moral leadership. This paper examines using a case study from the University of Melbourne how valid this claim is.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing upon our ethnographic experiences in various capacities at the University of Melbourne, we examine the issue of how environmentally sustainable that university and other Australian universities are in an era increasingly impacted by anthropogenic climate change and a global ecological crisis. We argue that while indeed the University of Melbourne has embarked upon a variety of activities and programmes that exhibit some commitment to the notions of environmental sustainability and resilience, it continues to engage in practices that are not sustainable, the most glaring of which is on-going investments in fossil fuels. In this regard, in the neoliberal era that has come to pervade universities in various ways, there is a disjuncture between the lofty stated commitments to societal moral leadership and environmental sustainability on the part of the University of Melbourne as well as many other Australian universities.