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Contribution short abstract

Disentangling U.S. Academic Environmental Research from Corporate and Colonial Interests and Opportunities for Graduate Labor Intervention

Contribution long abstract

Environmental science and engineering research (ESER) at academic institutions in the United States often claim to provide technological and scientific solutions to ongoing climate, water, and energy issues, both nationally and abroad. However, environmental research is limited in its ability to contribute to a just transition. The University is welded to and upholds colonial and capitalist structures, and therefore lacks the infrastructure to disrupt environmental injustice and oppose environmental degradation. To increase the utility of ESER in the movement for a just transition, we must disentangle the research from the University’s oppressive frameworks. One such example is disassociating research from the profits of war (ex: funding for the US Department of Defense for Drinking water research). I aim to analyze the current system of ESER, and propose reforms such as funding-schemes, research priorities, and research methods, to reorient ESER toward a collaborative and anti-colonial model.

Graduate labor movements have a long history of disrupting relationships of universities to war and fossil fuels through calls for divestment. Graduate labor powers environmental research, and there may be opportunities for graduate labor to push for further reconstruction (or deconstruction) of the University. I will evaluate graduate labor campaigns and identify the opportunities graduate labor may have to intervene in ESER through archival research, interviews with graduate labor organizers and environmental researchers, and critical reflections on my personal experience. Environmental graduate researchers at US universities are uniquely situated to transform ESER into a form useful for a just transition.