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The world is watching Paris with a heavy heart, drumming a beat that is at once weary with fatigue and quick with panic. At the same time, the environmental community has been watching Paris for many months—for a different reason. It is hard to believe that in less than two weeks, COP21, the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, will meet in a city still reeling from a tragedy of loss, hatred and fear.
Throughout its history, the Duke University endowment has faced scrutiny and been a target for advocacy. The movement to divest from apartheid in the 1980s, the more recent call for the endowment to be free of conflict minerals, the effort by Duke Open to increase investment transparency and the current campaign to divest from fossil fuels are all examples of advocacy with varying degrees of success. As Duke students and faculty raise concerns about what makes a responsible and ethical endowment, I argue that the difficulty in acquiring information about Duke University’s advisory processes is a major hurdle in reaching community contentment about what goes on behind Duke’s black curtain of investments.
Not to be that senior writing about the job search, but I’m a senior writing about the job search. I know that reflecting upon the seemingly limited scope of career opportunities post-Duke and how that interplays with Duke’s mission is not a novel use of this space. Year after year, we see juniors and seniors funneled into the private, for-profit sector in aggressive and effective recruitment pushes, and year after year we read echoes of the same Chronicle columns lamenting that fact. However, where many columnists appear to subtly (or explicitly) apologize for criticizing these career paths or Duke in general, I want to take an active stance that Duke fails to cultivate a space in which students can pursue creative, diverse, ethical careers, and that this is not only problematic but also intentional.
Environmentalism sometimes seems like an effort of words: we’re experts at the buzzword battle-cry, green war paint streaking our cheeks. The eco-friendly lexicon is all over campus. Sustainable this, green that, and did we mention it’s local? Certainly, in many cases, Duke doesn’t just talk the talk—it walks the walk. From LEED certifications to sustainable food procurement to reductions in our carbon footprint, Duke is striving to be a leader in sustainability. A look at Duke’s electricity supply, however, paints a picture that is not so dazzlingly green.
A glimpse into the brown paper bag on my patio reveals coffee grounds, kale stalks, egg shells, olive pits and the seeded skeleton of a red pepper. These are just a few artifacts of the meals cooked in my apartment over the last week. In a few days, my roommate or I will carry it across central campus, fruit flies trailing, and toss it in the green receptacle near Dame’s Express labeled “Brooks Contractor: compostable materials.”
As an aspiring environmental organizer, I have found it difficult to focus. Devoting my energy to one campaign, one cause has always felt narrow and limiting. Even though I know I’m acting in the context of a broader movement, being strategic has often felt single-minded and being exact has occasionally felt exclusionary.
The new year crinkles. Sounds of a new semester are those of bubble wrap popping, nylon scratching, tape unsticking, cardboard tearing. Before the evidence of move-in day is trucked away to a landfill or facility, our campus is wrapped with the paper and plastic shells of dorm and apartment innards. Whether it’s because we actually believe we need it all or because it’s an experiment in the physical limitations of the college dorm room, there’s no doubt: we have a lot of stuff.
If a tree falls in North Carolina, can it make the lights go on in London? The European Union seems to think so, along with a rapidly expanding industry that’s cutting down trees to burn for energy. It’s called biomass, and while its advocates boast that it is “clean” and “renewable,” studies by groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council have shown that burning trees for fuel is dirtier than burning coal.
