New York announces a climate change campus

How might higher education respond to the climate crisis?

One answer to this very large question is for a given campus to expand its academic teaching on the topic, across the curriculum. A second answer involves expanding a college or university’s research work, also across the disciplines. Over time, an institution’s commitment to building and sharing global warming knowledge increases.

As an alternative, we can imagine the creation of climate programs within larger universities. Or in a more ambitious way, by creating an entire climate institution. I speculated about this in my recent book, Universities on Fire, forecasting that “entire graduate schools and undergraduate colleges specializing in the climate crisis appear…” (4) Later on in the book I added:

Looking decades ahead, we can imagine an academy increasingly devoted to studying the Anthropocene through familiar academic departments and new ones. Depending on an institution’s nature and strategy, we may forecast new forms for such work: centers, institutes, academic programs, colleges within universities, entire standalone colleges and universities devoted to researching the topic. (86; emphases added)

That is precisely what New York state recently announced. Stony Brook University will lead the construction of the New York Climate Exchange on Governor’s Island.

According to the Stony Brook official page as well as the New York Times’ article, the Exchange has several…