The Sustainability Inquisition

November 10, 2010 By Ashley Thorne

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1644

Do you teach sustainability? Do you research sustainability? Will you promote

sustainability? Are you setting an example in sustainability? Give us details.

Rather intrusive questions like these are popping up in faculty surveys across the
country. This week, two Argus volunteers—one on the East coast, one on the West—
wrote to us after they were each startled by the bluntness of their universities’ inquiries.

Right You Are

While using American University’s database for

recording faculty publications, one professor noticed
something unusual. After filling in information on
authors, the title, the journal, the year, the volume,
the pages, whether it was refereed, whether it was
international, who publishes the journal, etc.—he
came to a box asking whether this was sustainability
research.

He was baffled. “What is sustainability research,

anyway?” he wondered. He looked for a definition and clicked on a link where he read:

“Sustainability research” focuses on a key principle of sustainability (such as social

equity or environmental stewardship); addresses a sustainability challenge (such as
climate change or poverty); or furthers our understanding of the interconnectedness of
societal and environmental challenges. Sustainability research leads toward solutions
that support economic prosperity, social wellbeing, and ecological health.

He wrote to us at NAS, “Although I was as recently as 22 hours ago skeptical of what

you said about ‘sustainability,’ right you are.”

It’s unclear whether “sustainability research” is important to American University or

whether the question was simply part of the standard database provided by the host
company Digital Measures, which many other institutions use. What colleges and
universities intend to do with the information also remains unclear. They likely use it to
compete with one another, to reward faculty who do research on sustainability, or to
increase their scores in campus green ratings. American U is a member of both the
Sustainability Tracking Assessment & Rating System (STARS), which gives points for
faculty involved in sustainability research—and the American College and University
Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), which calls on its signatories to “expand
research” in order to “achieve climate neutrality.”
In any case, the inclusion of this question in the university reporting system is indicative
of a new trend in higher ed to assess campus progress in the march toward
sustainatopia.

This professor saw confirmed what NAS has been describing: that “sustainability” has a
lot going on under the surface. Let’s hop over to California, where we’ll be able to see
what universities really mean when they push this fashionable doctrine forward.

There’s a Lot More to Sustainability than the Environment

Faculty members at San Diego State University recently received an email from Provost
Nancy Marlin asking them to “take a few minutes to respond to San Diego State's first
survey on faculty teaching and research related to sustainability.”

The survey asks nine questions. The first is, “Do you teach sustainability focused
courses?” Fine print under the question explains that these are “Courses in which
the primary content focuses on the Environment, Social Justice, Economic Equality,
Human Health; Resource Management; Environmental Ethics, Economics or Law;
Sustainable Tourism Management, Conservation and/or Preservation, Land Use
Planning and Development, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management.”

While such subjects as the environment, ecosystem management, conservation, and

resource management make immediate sense as names for stewardship of the earth, a
few aren’t so obvious. Social justice, economic equality, economics, and law don’t seem
to be specifically “sustainability focused” or fit with the environmental theme.

That’s because there’s a lot more to sustainability than just the environment. For a
great many of its proponents, the environment serves as a cover to smuggle in a host
of other ideologies. As the University of Delaware framed it in its 2007 residence life
materials, “sustainability is a viable conduit for citizenship education and the
development of a particular values system.”

Part of that “particular values system,” we’ve found, is a proclivity to big government,
economic redistribution, and politically correct
preferences for certain identity groups. That’s how
sustainability is able to include ideas such as social
justice, economic equality, economics, and law. Indeed,
the top of the survey says:

Sustainability curriculum and research activities are not

limited to considerations of environmental impact of
human development or climate change but include
content on interrelated social, economic, ethical, and
environment dimensions.
The tension between sustainability’s shared aims is commonly depicted in a Venn
diagram, with three interlocking circles labeled “Environment,” “Economy,” and
“Society.”

This intrusion into partisan politics and economics is what makes “sustainability” unfit to
be “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education,” as powerful
advocacy groups such as Second Nature are trying to make it.

Green and Greedy

But let’s move on to the second, more important question: “Do you incorporate
sustainability as a distinct course component or deal with a single
sustainability issue in any of your courses that are not specifically
sustainability focused? Please indicate how many courses you teach that
have a sustainability related course component.”

Selecting a number, 0-9, is the sole possible response here. Answering “no” isn’t an
option—in fact, only four out of the nine questions have a “no” option.

This question is a net to catch all courses that aren’t explicitly sustainability focused
(which are themselves quite widely defined). The implication is that there is no course
that sustainability can’t touch, no subject too self-contained for sustainability to be
squeezed in.

There’s where that phrase “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher
education” comes in. Sustainability, say its advocates, should be the primary goal of
academic learning. Not only if you’re studying to be an environmental engineer—or
even an economist or lawyer—but also if you want to be a nurse, a mathematician, or a
philosopher. Like diversity, sustainability doesn’t stop with administrators but turns a
greedy eye toward the curriculum. And it won’t be content with just some of it.

The third question presses for specifics: “How do you incorporate sustainability
into your courses that are not sustainability focused? Check all that apply:”
Readings on sustainability topics/
Guest speakers or experts
nature
Service learning or study abroad
Research activities
components
Case studies Internship/ Internship Courses
Provide information on co-curricular
Projects or assignments
or community activities
Personal example (going
paperless, saving paper etc) Other, please explain
Perhaps the most interesting option here is “personal example.” Even if a professor has
legitimate reasons for not bringing in guest speakers or doing sustainability related
activities in class, there is no reason he can’t adapt his own lifestyle to set the
“example” for impressionable students. Leaving that box unchecked makes the
professor look like a bad role model. The real mistake is that the university put it there
in the first place, as it sets up a sort of trap.

Indeed, the questionnaire as a whole serves to back faculty members into a corner, to
make them feel obliged to check something in order to appear to be doing what the
university says they ought. The very creation of this survey shows the pressure put on
faculty to conform.

A follow-up question to this one is intended to gauge faculty members’ commitment

levels: “Would you be willing to integrate (or integrate more thoroughly)
sustainability concepts in the courses you teach that are not sustainability
focus [sic]? This may be phrased as a question, but its message is loud and clear.
Essentially it means, “Get on board with our agenda.”

“No, it does not relate to my subject,” and “No, I am not interested in sustainability” are
in the drop-down menu as options. It would be interesting to know how respondents
who select these answers will be marked in the university’s records. Will they be asked
or given incentives to reconsider?

Conforming Students to the New Ethics

The answer set for the fourth question is where things really get strange. Most courses
are now required to announce in advance a list of student learning outcomes—things
students should have mastered by the end of the semester. Student learning outcomes
as a concept tends to encourage professors to come up with low aims and high-
sounding words. Here are the ones SDSU wants to see, some of which sound as if they
came from the educational jargon generator:

Do the courses you teach include any of the following student learning
outcomes? Check all that apply:

Understand and be able to effectively communicate the concept of sustainability

Develop and use an ethical perspective in which students view themselves as
embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world
Become aware of and explore the connections between their chosen course of study
and sustainability
Develop technical skills or expertise necessary to implement sustainable solutions
Understand the way in which sustainable thinking and decision-making contributes
to the process of creating solutions for current and emerging social, environmental, and
economic crises
 Contribute practical solutions to real-world sustainability challenges
Synthesize understanding of social, economic, and environmental systems and
reason holistically
Other

“An ethical perspective”? We’ve seen sustainability’s strange, non-humanistic definitions

of “ethics,” its stricter-than-Puritan moral codes, and its overtly religious nature. We’ve
also seen that a nation’s manner of educating shapes the
character of its people. So what character quality does
sustainability ethics seek to instill in students? The ability to “view
themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected
world.”

What does that even mean? It sounds more like burying your
face in a planet-sized pillow than using “an ethical perspective.”
The word perspective is also troublesome. Higher education’s role
is not to tell students which perspectives they should adopt, but
to give them the tools to develop their own.

Another checkbox item in this list is meant as a reminder of that Venn diagram. Can
you spot it?

The survey’s last page asks respondents to indicate their department and whether it
offered “sustainability-focused immersive experience programs.” It prompts them to list
all “sustainability focused” courses they or others in the department teach, and to
indicate whether they do any sustainability focused or related research.

There Is a Right Answer

In her email, Provost Marlin said that taking this survey is “critical” in order to “ensure
that San Diego State is more competitive in many of the external ‘green’ ratings and
rankings, which are increasingly important to students.” She does not point to any
evidence that incorporating sustainability into more of the curriculum will give students
a better education or give faculty members a deeper knowledge of their disciplines. The
rationale, instead, is to do something that students think is important. This seems on
plane with parents who appease their children by giving them whatever they want. Is
that wise? Is it good for students in the long run?

SDSU’s choice to conduct this kind of assessment has some serious implications. Such a
survey has the weight of institutional authority behind it. If you’re a faculty member
and receive Provost Marlin’s email, you’re going to feel obliged to answer a certain way,
and to indicate some eagerness to get on the bandwagon. Again, while there aren’t
known incentives or consequences for answering one way or the other, this one-track
survey says clearly, “Follow the pattern we laid out for you.”
This pressure means that many professors will exaggerate their interest in
sustainability, which likely means the university will brag about its high faculty
involvement rate. Green ratings will soar and outsiders (including prospective students)
will get the “right” picture.

As of today, hundreds of college and university presidents have vowed to make

sustainability “part of the curriculum for all students.” The president of Unity College
declared, “It has to be ubiquitous, it has to be done by everyone, it has to be part of
the whole infrastructure.” Colleges and universities are on the verge of a major
overhaul of higher education to refit it around sustainability. Questions such as, “How
do you incorporate sustainability courses?” are only the beginning.