Steve Viederman, past president of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, is a member of the Ethical Markets Research Advisory Board in the area of Sustainability/Renewable Resource Sectors.
From: Robert Forrant and Linda Silk, editors. Inside and Out: Universities and Education and Sustainability, Baywood Publishing, 2006. Pps. 17-28
The obscure takes a while to see, the obvious, longer.
Anonymous
Going to a conference away from home is an exercise in unsustainability. The trip to and from the airport usually requires a car or taxi ride, single occupancy. The flight contributes to global warming, and is a microcosm of class structure: first, business and economy. The crowded highways traversed are multi-lane, having devoured green space and fertile farmland. Often they are lined with factories or the headquarters of corporations responsible for the manufacturing of the “excessities” that symbolize our modern age, and the billboards that urge us to buy more. And these ‘excessities” are unequally distributed. The highways to and from the airport are often bordered with urban blight. The occupants of these neighborhoods suffer noise and air pollution and other social ills not found in the suburbs. This view of the landscape often goes unnoticed because of its familiarity and because the traveler’s thoughts are elsewhere.
This view of the world is not what we want for children, our grandchildren and ourselves.
This essay addresses a necessary process for envisioning a sustainable future, and presents a brief overview of the meaning of the terms “sustainability” and “sustainable development” going well beyond the conventional focus on the environment.
This essay argues that universities by-and-large cannot seriously address issues of sustainability. It looks at the structure of the institutional setting and particularly the control imposed by disciplines and departments. In addition constraints to knowledge generation for policy needs are addressed, focusing particularly on the different questions and time frames that both the policy-makers and the general public place on research.
The essay notes the failure of most institutions to look systematically at their own footprint on sustainability, whether it be in the form of the impacts of their investments, their labor practices, their procurement, their relationship to the communities in which they are located, and the like, and ends with some suggestions as to what might come next.
Vision
A vision of a sustainable society is necessary to challenge all institutions in society to create the circumstances that will lead to transformative changes in the institutions themselves and in the society as a whole. Envisioning clarifies goals and also clarifies the processes of change that are needed.
The emphasis on a vision of a desired future is essential because it forces a comparison of an ideal state with the situation that now prevails and would likely occur if present trends continued with little or no societal intervention.
Envisioning a sustainable society is a process with a beginning and no end because new circumstances will arise that require attention. The challenge of the process is to create better conditions for ourselves while insuring that we leave options open for future generations to make the changes they envision as necessary.
Envisioning a sustainable society requires new approaches to understanding and creating change that is transformative, systemic and structural, rather than ameliorative. The emphasis on an envisioning process requires involving a wide range of people, individuals, groups and communities that are usually not invited to sit at the decision-making table. The process requires a broader democratic and participatory ‘we’ than is often the case.
Envisioning is a process for clarifying values, helping to create deeper understanding of who ‘we’ are, and at the same time what ‘we’ want to be, and what ‘we’ want to facilitate for the benefit of future generations.
Envisioning challenges the acceptance of attainable goals as ends in themselves, forcing formulation of goals that are just and needed, even though at any given point in the process they seem unattainable. The concept of “acceptable risk”, for example, raises a number of questions: “Acceptable to whom?” “Decided upon by whom?” and “With what consequences for whom?” “Acceptability” usually relies on external expertise, often with conflict among the ‘experts’, and decision-making without consultation with those who are the object of an assault. Citizens are, therefore, at the mercy of experts, diminishing their power to control their communities.
Envisioning is pro-active not accepting passive acceptance of the present situation. Focusing on root causes of unsustainability rather than just symptoms creates opportunities to plan a new course of action more effectively, avoiding being victims of fate. It requires attention to first principles: what is it “we” want for ourselves? For our children and their children? For all children? It demands an assessment of the present system of capitalism as a barrier to a just, equitable and environmentally sound society. It calls for and empowers the search for a new ‘ism’ that would facilitate the goals envisioned.
Envisioning a sustainable society is a social construct that goes against a notion so central to our ways of thinking that gives primacy to science and technology as the basis of the solutions of all of human problems. Attention to the technical means of achieving sustainability is important but cannot become a preoccupation until “we” know who “we” are where “we” are going. There are no formulae to define sustainability or are there equations to measure it. Einstein’s observation concerning mathematics applies equally to sustainability: “the laws… as far as they refer to reality, are not certain, and as far as they are certain, do not refer to reality.”
Offered here is an unexceptional personal vision of sustainability that informs the thoughts that follow, underlining the breadth of the changes that are needed well beyond environmental issues.
The world envisioned would be a peaceful world, in which communities control their own economies, and where peoples of different races, classes, ethnicities, ages, and sexual orientation live together learning and benefiting from social diversity. It would be a world in which the air is clean, the water pure, and where neither the poor nor the rich need to be concerned about environmental assaults on their health.
It is also a world where work is satisfying, provides a living wage and pay equity, with good benefits and the right to organize and one where education is freely available and focuses attention on the obligations of citizenship as well as the needs of life-long learning for pleasure and advancement. Finally, it is a world where justice, equity and fairness exist within and among nations, and where power is used to enrich not to diminish people.
Sustainability
The terms “sustainable development” and “sustainability” gained prominence in the last decades of the 20th century as a critique of development models that resulted in the destruction of nature. Inter-governmental organizations and governments established international and national commissions whose reports have been long since been buried. Non-governmental organizations at local, national and international levels proliferated, countless conferences were held, books and papers published, and web sites created. Today even the corporate world has accommodated the language of sustainability. The discussion has been sustained but the world looks much the same as it did before.
The discussion then and now is still largely organized around discrete, though clearly interrelated issues—the environment, women, development, and population. And within these broad areas the foci are narrow and unconnected. The emphasis on the environment is still foremost and even today the word “sustainability” is usually a short hand for environmental sustainability, for “greening.” Trying to deal with all of the parts of the problem of unsustainability together remains elusive, in part because of the absence of an envisioning process. You cannot get anywhere without knowing where you are going. The problem also is complex and chaotic and thus difficult to confront directly. Our institutions are not structured appropriately. They tend to be organized vertically with little horizontal integration. Raising issues of the whole requires dealing with the systems in which the parts are imbedded. This, in turn, challenges too many beliefs and behaviors, raising questions about the use and abuse of power within institutions in the modern world. The political will necessary to reduce the dissonance between creed and deed, as Gandhi urged in the mid 20th century, does not exist.
Moving toward a vision of sustainability is an extremely complex problem and there has been little resolution of the key, underlying issues.
Einstein observed “perfection of means and confusion of ends seems to characterize our age.” Mechanisms to address these questions as a whole, or at a minimum to put the parts together, and ways of creating opportunities for transformative change are lacking. The focus is on details with no assurance that the details are the most important. Without a sense of the whole there can be no understanding of the interrelationships of the parts. By focusing on the parts rather than the whole it becomes convenient to avoid explicit attention to what are arguably the two most important and difficult, interrelated issues for sustainability and development: the global economy, and the distribution of power among the peoples of the world.
Sustainability is not a technical problem to be solved. It is ultimately about what a society values, not in the technical sense of economic valuation, but in the sense of human concerns and aspirations.
Higher education and sustainability
In his 1974 Nobel acceptance speech the economist Fredrich von Hayek began by observing the irony that economists at that time were being called upon to correct the problems for which they themselves were responsible. Little has changed, and economists are not the only ones at fault.
Higher education will play a role in shaping a vision and the practice of a sustainable society, for better or worse. It has a responsibility and an obligation for the better. Its graduates will be leaders of countries and corporations and religious institutions, of art and thought, of science and engineering, people of power. They will also be citizens, great and small, asked to participate in decision-making for the commonweal. Its faculty will have access to the halls of power and will be called upon by the society for assistance.
Higher educational institutions’ efforts to respond to the challenges of sustainability must begin with an honest institutional assessment of the obstacles they face. Focusing on obstacles is not a counsel of despair but a necessary first step toward the changes that are necessary. It is also a way of assessing the limits of institutions to respond to the challenge of sustainability. The focus then will be on what can be done in the short tem, and the changes that are possible over time.
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, at a conference of parliamentarians and religious leaders on global education held in Moscow in 1990, offered this critique of the education of those Germans who allowed the atrocities against Jews and Russians during World War II.
They [the Germans] did not come from the underworld; some came from some of the best and most prestigious Universities in Germany: they had degrees and even doctorates in medicine, philosophy, jurisprudence and theology. In other words: they were not shielded by their education. What was wrong with it? It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience. Thus in the name of a theory based on conquest and domination, multitudes of men and women, and—woe unto us—children too, were reduced and diminished only to be seen as tools; their lives used as instruments. The sacredness of the human being, the uniqueness of the person, the right of every individual to immortality were negated and discarded at the whim of those who possessed power—either political or intellectual.
What is the relevance of the Wiesel’s criticisms of pre-World War II German education as a guide for the discussion of higher education and sustainability today?
The world has changed in many ways in the last 60 years. But “conquest and domination” are still all too common, over nature and humans.
Domination, mastery, of the environment is a recurrent theme in modern life. Yale’s President, economist Richard Levin, began his inaugural address in October 1993 by quoting Sophocles, “Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man” adding that “the chorus sings of humanity’s power over nature.” Continuing, Levin observes that “We celebrate today our University–a monument to the achievement Sophocles extols. We preserve humanity’s achievement [in controlling nature]. We impart an appreciation of that achievement by our teaching and augment it by our research.” But what is the extent and what are the unintended consequences of our efforts to control and manage nature for present and future generations?
In a 1996 conference on philanthropy James Gibson of the Urban Institute noted that many social problems like poverty might now best be thought of as organic to capitalism and not subject to “cure.” Further discussion suggested that over the long haul efforts to deal with social ills should seek” equilibrium” rather than a cure. Clearly the emphasis was on amelioration of social problems rather than their roots. If social problems are rooted in the very nature of capitalism then that is “the problem to be solved.” This was not raised. This at best amoral discussion reflects all too well the concerns expressed by Wiesel, that are too common in academia.
Why Can’t Universities Foster Learning And Behavioral Change Toward Sustainability?
The world has problems; universities’ have disciplines. Inter-, trans-, non-, multi-disciplinary approaches rooted in the disciplines.
Sustainability is about the whole, about the sum of and the relationships among the parts of systems. Universities excel at parts, not the whole. The search for knowledge is defined as that which is researchable. Expertise is valued. But as the eminent microbiologist Erwin Chargoff suggested, where expertise prevails, wisdom vanishes. Can higher education cultivate wisdom as well as they do knowledge?
Michael Sovern, while President of Columbia University in the 1990s, observed that the most exciting issues confronting society seemed to fall “at the interstices between the departments,” an admittedly unexceptional observation. But then more than 200 years after the founding of that University and after decades of discussion and debate over ‘interdisciplinarity’, he and his colleagues could do no better than to suggest that they needed to “figure out” how to deal with this reality!
Derek Bok, who retired from the presidency of Harvard in 1992, observed:
Our universities excel in pursuing the easier opportunities where established academic and social priorities coincide. On the other hand, when social needs are not clearly recognized and backed by adequate financial support, higher education has often failed to respond as effectively as it might, even to some of the most important challenges facing America. Armed with the security of tenure and time to study the world with care, professors would appear to have a unique opportunity to act as society’s scouts to signal impending problems long before they are visible to others. Yet rarely have members of the academy succeeded in discovering emerging issues and bringing them vividly to the public’s attention. What Rachel Carson did for risks to the environment, Ralph Nader for consumer protection, Michael Harrington for problems of poverty, Betty Frieden for women’s rights, they did as independent critics, not as members of a faculty. Universities will usually continue to respond weakly unless outside support is available and the subject involved command prestige in academic circles.
Offering an alternative view of what is possible from outside the bonds of academia, James E. Welch, Jr., GE Chair, in March 1994 argued that “boundaryless” is an essential operating principle in business. By this he meant “piercing the walls of 100-year-old fiefdoms and empires called finance, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and gathering teams from all those functions in one room, with one shared coffee pot, one shared vision and one consuming passion-to design the world’s best jet engine, or ultrasound machines, or refrigerator.” The principle should apply equally to colleges and universities where education for sustainable development is a more important priority than the goal of producing a more refined product.
A question that educators concerned with learning about sustainable development must ask: Can a student receive an A in ecology and an A in economics? If he/she really understands the key concepts of the disciplines and is willing to point out the contradictions between these disciplines to the professor is there the risk of receiving a lower grade? In economics, for example, equity is not about justice, but ownership; the focus is on the short-term rather than the long-term, witness the discounting of the dollar; and externalities to the society as a whole are not accounted for. The words ecology and economics both have the same root: ecos, home. But their architecture is very different. And neither focuses on issues of equity and justice. This is symptomatic of the systemic problem that higher education must grapple with.
The search for technological fixes is reflected in the “management” of problems. For example, weather modification research to ‘manage’ climate issues is pursued. New engines are designed that might reduce the guilt of single occupancy driving. But the new congestion occurring as a result of more cars, albeit environmentally friendly, creates a new problem for us to ‘manage’. Management efforts tend to be ameliorative and important in the short-term. But not dealing with the consequences and effects of our actions in the long-term is symbolic of the problems of universities. These institutions teach management that as the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul writes, “is a tertiary skill—a method not a value. And yet we apply it to every domain as if it were the ideal of our civilization.” As a cartoonist observed one cave man speaking with another, “Let’s concentrate on technology for a couple of thousand years, and then we can develop a value system.” Management is not about people and their needs.
The culture of colleges and universities makes it difficult for fundamentally different views to prevail or even be fully addressed. As Duke University law professor James Coleman observes “in reality, the young scholars as they seek to win tenure, are forced to approach certain problems in a certain way that leads them to the same conclusions. You don’t get as much independence of thought as the tenure system seems to promote.” And you don’t get to ask fundamental questions, such as the failures of capitalism.
In economics, ethics and the “real” world seem to be an intrusion. On receiving the Nobel Prize for economics Amataya Sen was praised for his strong ethical sensibilities “despite” his technical capabilities. Another Nobel laureate Robert Mundell was notable, according to his teacher Charles Kindelberger, because “he brought into international economics some theoretical background but a great deal of worldly wisdom along with it. He had a very well-developed, quick and imaginative sense of the real problems of the real world.” Adds journalist Will Greider “it would make an interesting experiment if economics professors agreed to forfeit their protected status and submit to the invigorating competition of free labor markets (as they regularly recommend to workers). Would market forces generate freer thinking in the academy than the professors’ protected guild status? You can be sure we will not find out.” To repeat, Einstein’s observation about mathematics applies equally to economics and to science in general as we try to deal with the policy process for sustainability: “the laws of mathematics, as far as they refer to reality, are not certain, and as far as they are certain, do not refer to reality.”
Politics is omitted from the ‘sustainability’ disciplines and more importantly from the real world of sustainability. Lord Kenet, British negotiator at the Montreal intra-governmental conference on climate change in the early 1990s suggests “politics is the art of taking good decisions on insufficient evidence.” Paul Hawken, businessman turned ecologist goes further in his critique: “We know how to transform this world to reduce our impact on nature by several fold, how to provide meaningful, dignified living-wage jobs for all who seek them, and how to feed, clothe, and house every person on earth. What we don’t know is how to remove those in power, those whose ignorance of biology is matched only by their indifference to human suffering. This is a political issue. It is not an ecological problem.”
Science does not reduce uncertainty. Rather it creates greater uncertainty. As science writer Andrew Revkin notes, “Like a flickering compass needle, science offers a trajectory toward truth, but not a recipe for dealing with it.”
In the real world, philosophers of science Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz have observed, “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent.” We must learn to live with and deal with uncertainty, which creates considerable discomfort in us all, in and out of academia.
The ‘precautionary principle” is more the product of renegade scientists than of those in the mainstream.
There is little acceptance of the validity of indigenous knowledge.
The view of the forest is lost because of the focus on the trees. And some of the disciplines have disappeared, spawning new narrower focused disciplines. For example biology has begat zoology and botany and they have begat microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, physiology, and more highly specialized disciplines, all separated from the whole. Rutgers University ecologist David Ehrenfeld points out that “loss of knowledge and skills is now a big problem in our universities and no subject is of greater danger of disappearing than our long accumulated knowledge of the natural world. …We are on the verge of losing our ability to tell one plant or animal from another and of forgetting how the known species interact among themselves and with their environment.”
Scientific research in colleges and universities is usually investigator-generated and increasingly responsive to the needs of industry that has co-opted the research process. The corporations have become significant providers of the ‘outside support’ that Derek Bok suggests is now necessary to get researchers working. But the need for knowledge generated by a vision of sustainability must be driven not only by the researchers and their financial supporters but also by the participants in the envisioning process. The perceptions of what knowledge is most needed, particularly in the short-term, are likely to be in conflict. Researchers may believe that global climate change is the preeminent environmental issue whereas communities fighting for their survival may see job creation, and toxics as a high order of priority. Both research needs are important. How can colleges and universities respond, especially when the guild-like tenure system rewards the former rather than the latter? And in what time frames? Research is often a leisurely process, but policy makers and communities need answers or at least a sense of direction sooner than suits many academics. ‘Muddling through’ often trumps the peer-reviewed article. And expert knowledge is rarely sufficient for action.
What Can Be Done?
Robert Hutchins observed when he was President of the University of Chicago, “it is not a very good university, but it is the best we have.”
The constraints and issues described here are systemic and cannot be dealt with piecemeal. Nothing less than system change can effectively strengthen colleges and universities in their pursuit of learning and acting for sustainability. It is perhaps too flippant to assert that nothing less than a totally new institution that we cannot yet even begin to describe is needed for education and learning related to sustainable development. That this is not likely to occur and certainly not in the foreseeable future places a great burden on existing institutions to muddle through, doing the best they can.
Systems serve specific purposes within the larger contexts in which they operate. Educational institutions teach, train and produce research.
The ways parts of systems are arranged determine their performance. Educational institutions are historically organized around disciplines. This is dysfunctional with regard to sustainability. And as in the case of economics and ecology (as presently taught and researched) the disciplines are often in conflict. Disciplines are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Ultimately, the issue confronting higher educational institutions is one of fundamental culture change. System change of the orders of magnitude that are needed engender fear of losing power and authority. This in turn makes the very possibility of change seem to be impossible.
Systems need feedback but it is not clear where that comes from in a university. Students are always in transition. Alumni are distant. Faculty is distracted by their own needs. Administrators raise money, and money from governments and corporations talks. Communities are perceived as subjects not as partners or collaborators. Higher educational institutions are accustomed to speaking, but do they listen carefully to the broad range of their stakeholders?
Relationships to outside constituents such as community organizations must be developed in a meaningful way. It is not simply a matter of what the institution believes it may contribute to the community. It is also the need for the institution to develop a way of listening to the community and responding to what it hears. The institutions also need to develop appropriate governance structures to receive and respond to feedback from all of its constituencies. With universities increasing obligations to the corporate world for research support real conflicts arise.
The process of “change” must become a singular focus of the institution, in teaching, research, training, its relationship to community, governance, etc. to see how the institution might be restructured with a vision and goal of sustainability. This is not a task for a department, or a new institute for the study of change, but for the institution as a whole. Ideally this process would be done in conjunction with the community in which the institution is located and from which it can learn. This is for mutual benefit, not noblesse oblige.
Most efforts at social change are, in effect, ameliorative: they seek to remedy immediate problems, but do not deal with root causes. Efforts at reformation can create some change, but they remain within the limits of existing systemic constraints. The most significant and lasting forms of social change are transformative and revolutionary. They pose fundamental challenges to existing systems, seeking to envision and create new systems. Transformation should be the long-tern goal of colleges and universities
Nothing less than a redefinition of what an economy can and should be is in order, reflecting the vision “we” create because the university does not exist in a vacuum. Scale is an important matter to consider. Have we gone beyond what we can deal with? And if scale were smaller, as Grieder observes, “The principles of economics would look utterly different, since the meanings of profit, loss, and productive output would be revalued to conform better with society’s understandings [and vision] of what is gain and what is loss.” Can capitalism be redefined in theory and in practice to encompass justice, equity and the environment? If not, what would the new ‘ism’ look like? And who will initiate the discussion and with whom?
But initiating such a process of transformation is daunting. How and where do we begin? Universities, research institutions, think tanks, and even religious institutions have become so dependent upon corporate largesse that their ‘objectivity’ is in question. Truth and objectivity are ephemeral as knowledge is embedded in social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Are there institutions that are not co-opted or corrupted by the present system so that they can participate in a discussion? How can a process that will last a decade or more be institutionalized and sustained? How can the process be made truly participatory? How can it be made democratic? How can power be shared by all not exercised by a few, something essential to the process and vision of sustainability? How can we learn new modes of speaking, learning and interacting to make the process effective? This requires people in power learning to listen and respond, rather than to dominate conversations.
Creating a personal or even an institutional or community vision of a more sustainable future is the relatively easy part. What is infinitely more difficult, and what is often overlooked, is describing and creating the process for achieving a vision that is the product of truly public discussion and debate. How do the process and the resulting product become authentic by being inclusive? How do we build trust across race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender, and age? How can we cut across the factors, such as unequal power distribution, age, ethnicity and race that have often hindered rather than helped to foster dialogue and action? How will such a dialogue be sustained among people already “too busy” dealing with survival or securing tenure? How do we manage a project that on the one hand has such clear goals, yet on the other hand has such ambiguous and ambitious outcomes? How do we overcome the forces that push towards short-term thinking?
All the experiments in sustainability, large and small, must be examined and we must learn from their successes and failures. We must also see how they interact and form a whole. Using the vision as a guide we will need to build new systems that reflect a view of the world that prioritizes social justice, equality and environmental soundness. We can look ahead testing ideas against the vision. At the same time we must engage in back casting as if we were archaeologists reconstructing the past from shards, as we look back from the vision to the present. This helps to avoid being caught in our present mindsets. Both approaches will help to identify paths and pitfalls.
Some Modest Proposals
The Duke University historian Lawrence Goodwyn argues, “The first thing we need to do is license in people a degree of doubt and curiosity…. We live in a damaged culture, and people are inhibited more than intimidated. Getting rid of complacency means expanding our curiosity. Then we need to encourage an insurgent temperament.”
Sustainability concerns issues of justice and equity, as well as the environment. Accepting this colleges and universities can model some of their behavior in the shorter term to demonstrate their understanding of this.
Colleges and universities can develop participatory processes for envisioning a different society, both within their institutions and communities to which they have obligations.
They can begin the process of introspection to develop an understanding of the barriers to being more effective educators and researchers for sustainability.
They can focus attention on the nature of the changes institutionally and in the society as a whole needed for sustainability.
They can reallocate financial and human resources for teaching, training and research so that members of the academy can succeed “ in discovering new issues and bringing them vividly to the public’s attention.” They can develop reward systems for work on sustainability that responds to community and policy needs in a timely fashion that will “command prestige in academic circles”.
They can demonstrate concern for justice by among other things undertaking activities to make work satisfying and equitable, and by guaranteeing a living wage for workers.
They can contribute to the development of neighborhoods not only for faculty, but also for workers, and residents both low income and higher income.
They can foster learning toward sustainability for all members of the institution, albeit imperfect at the start.
They can greatly reduce their ecological footprints through building design and maintenance, energy conservation, purchasing, and the like.
They as large institutional investors can exercise their obligations of ownership in corporations. They can engage corporations in discussions of the externalities they generate that are contrary to a search for sustainability, and through the voting of their proxies on issues of corporate governance and social and environmental concerns. Similarly investments in community development are consonant with sustainability. A new fiduciary duty that is farseeing requires that political environmental, cultural and social risks and opportunities be integrated into investment decisions. Research shows that companies that act in accordance with good corporate governance standards including awareness of their impacts on society are likely to perform better and offer greater shareholder value.
These are small but visible steps on a long road.
Rabbi Tarphon preached centuries ago, “It is not your obligation to complete the task [of perfecting the world], but neither are you free to desist [from doing all you can]!’
[i] Any essay that refers to ‘universities’ generically is painting with a broad brush. Thus there may be some number of institutions of higher education that are a greater degree an exception to the characterizations offered here. Of one thing I am certain, however, they are too few and that the ‘great and the good’ are not among them.
Originally prepared as the keynote address at Education for Sustainable Development, Seventh Annual CITA Conference, The University of Massachusetts Lowell Committee on Industrial Theory and Assessment, October 23-24. 2003
Stephen Viederman is an activist, educator, writer, speaker and consultant on a wide range of issues including sustainability; the social role of higher education; the future of philanthropy and whether it can meet the challenges of democracy and civil society; environmental and economic justice; redefining fiduciary responsibility and issues of social investment; the limits of corporate social responsibility within the context of how we define the economy; population and the environment; and science and public policy. An underlying theme in his work is the problem of effecting long-term institutional change toward a just society. In 2000 Steve retired as President of the New York-based Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation.
[Univ and Sustaianability Lowell 11104]