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School of Environment and Natural Resources

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SENR Seminar Series - Racial Reckoning and the Environmental Movement

The School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR) Seminar Series and the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University welcome Rev. Marcia Dinkins, Ohio IPL and Black Women Rising and Rev. Jack Sullivan, Jr., DMin., DD., for a panel discussion, Racial Reckoning and the Environmental Movement on Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 4:10 p.m. via Zoom.  

Thelma Velez, School of Environment and Natural Resources will moderate the discussion.

Join via Zoom 

This panel was developed to hold space for the uncomfortable conversations that must occur within and without the SENR community if we wish to create a truly inclusive environment for environmental professionals. When considering environmental racism, this panel addresses toxicity beyond just natural resources (i.e., lead in soil and water, VOC’s and particulate matter in air).Toxic environments occur in diverse ways and plant seeds in the cultural environment that perpetuate and further elongate social and systemic injustice. Over the past few months, students within SENR (and OSU more broadly) have pressed the administration and faculty to address issues of racial equity, institutionalized discrimination, and social injustice. In early 2020, a series of emails circulated and prompted both students and faculty to draft and sign letters urging a commitment to racial equity. Though SENR seeks to be a welcoming space for everyone in the environmental community, many have expressed the opposite or simply withdrawn from this space. By now we must recognize that admitting Black and Brown students, LGBTQIA+ students, and students from underrepresented backgrounds into the college is not enough. While there are faculty who wish to support these students, until we all collectively engage in the work needed to dismantle systemic racism and injustice, our school will continue to be complicit in perpetuating these wicked problems.