Climate Justice Hub - Center for the Humanities

Overview

Strengthening and fortifying just transition efforts led by frontline communities of color across NYC.

Launched in September 2023, the NYC Climate Justice Hub is a partnership between the City University of New York (CUNY)—the nation’s largest public urban university—and the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA)—a coalition of grassroots organizations from the city’s most environmentally burdened neighborhoods who have led the fight for environmental and climate justice in NYC since 1991. Operating out of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, the Hub unites CUNY and NYC-EJA to advance NYC-EJA’s transformative policy priorities and research agenda, operationalize climate justice infrastructure at CUNY, and nourish an emerging generation of community-based climate leaders in NYC.

The Hub’s mission is to support NYC-EJA’s efforts to realize climate justice for New York City’s underserved, working-class communities of color. The Hub accomplishes this through the creation of new—and the activation of existing—trans-disciplinary systems in research, education, and leadership. These cross-sectoral networks built from faculty, students, and other resources at CUNY robustly support NYC-EJA and its member organizations in their efforts to accelerate “just transitions” in NYC.

The NYC Climate Justice Hub is the largest of several “climate hubs” that have been created around the nation through a series of generous grants from the Waverley Street Foundation. This initiative supports minority-serving universities to work with place-based environmental justice organizations to advance the priorities and aspirations of frontline communities most impacted by climate change. The current grant under which the NYC Climate Justice Hub is operating is for a 2-year pilot (2023-2025), with opportunities for future funding.

Elizabeth Yeampierre is the executive director at UPROSE, located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and one of the five NYC-EJA member organizations participating in the NYC Climate Justice Hub. She addresses elected officials, members of the press, climate justice researchers and academics, and environmental justice advocates during the NYC Climate Justice Hub Launch on September 19, 2023 about the importance of “shared power” in the fight for climate justice. Video by Marvic Paulo, captioned and edited by Charlie Overton and Pierina Pighi Bel.

25 CUNY undergraduate and graduate students selected for the 2024-2025 Climate Justice Fellowship & Internship program participated in an intensive week-long training Academy in June 2024, featuring dynamic speakers, interactive sessions, and site visits with the Hub’s community partners. Watch the video and learn more about the Academy here!

Partners

Through the NYC Climate Justice Hub, resources at CUNY are allocated to create programs that serve the climate justice campaigns and priorities communicated by NYC-EJA and five of their 13 participating member organizations.

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CUNY professors working on offshore wind energy meet with UPROSE, NYC-EJA, and NYC Climate Justice Hub staff to discuss collaboration opportunities during a hybrid meeting on April 26, 2024. Photo by Alan Minor.

Principles

Historically, climate and environmental research and work conducted by universities has not always been fully inclusive, helpful, or long-lasting. To this end, communities have often been exploited and negatively impacted by even the best-intentioned researchers and academic partners. For these reasons, the NYC Climate Justice Hub takes an approach to community expertise, research, and partnerships with universities that is guided by principles of equity, inclusion, purpose, and sustainability.

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The inaugural cohort of NYC Climate Justice Hub Fellows participate in a 4-day kick-off Academy the week of June 17, 2024. This immersive introduction to climate justice consisted of panels featuring community-based and academic climate justice experts, interactive activities, mindfulness and reflection exercises, and site visits. Photo by Ally Caple.

Initiatives

Research Teams

The objective of the Research Teams initiative is to provide technical assistance to community organizations and create a culture of good research practices for participating CUNY faculty and graduate students that models a community-driven research partnership and enables the production and dissemination of research and public knowledge products identified as important to NYC-EJA member groups.

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Classes & Curriculum Collaborations

The Classes & Curriculum initiative enables CUNY faculty at any level (part-time, full-time, graduate, undergraduate, etc.) who are teaching courses with an environmental or climate justice focus—or are aiming to develop such curricula— to meet with each other, share syllabi, and connect to climate justice content through NYC-EJA member organizations and their campaigns. Professors and their classes provide additional technical expertise, research, and campaign capacity to member organizations to further support their local priorities.

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Climate Justice Fellowship & Academy Program

This initiative provides an emerging generation of climate justice leaders from across CUNY with the skills, networks, and opportunities they need to advance climate solutions through study, service-learning, professional development, research and advocacy projects, and campaign and policy development

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Resources

The goal of the NYC Climate Justice Hub is not just to accomplish work that furthers a climate justice agenda for NYC, but to also amplify that work to a larger audience—including the work that has already been done by community partners. To this end, the Hub offers a diverse and continually expanding body of resources intended to help academics, students, researchers, community members, and climate justice advocates alike to think critically about climate justice challenges and their solutions.

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Staff

Eddie Bautista

Co-Director of NYC Climate Justice Hub

Eunice Ko

Co-Director of NYC Climate Justice Hub

Kendra Sullivan

Co-Director of NYC Climate Justice Hub

Michael Menser

Co-Director of NYC Climate Justice Hub

Research Teams Lead

Forrest Sparks

Project Manager

Participatory Budgeting Lead

Alan Minor

NYC-EJA Hub Coordinator for NYC-EJA

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Get Involved

Thank you for your interest in the NYC Climate Justice Hub!

To learn more about the Hub or to get involved, please email us at [email protected] or fill out our general interest form.

General Interest Form

Opportunities

There are many different ways to get involved with the NYC Climate Justice Hub! Take a look at the following opportunities to learn more about our work and contribute to our mission.

If you are a CUNY faculty member

We would be delighted to learn more about your research areas and courses that you are teaching! You may be a great match for one of our Research Teams or our Classes & Curriculum initiative. Or, you may be interested in having a Hub staff member speak to your class about our work. You may also be interested in checking out the Community Library in the Resources section for information that you can integrate into your own research or courses. Please reach out to Jazmyn Blackburn (Hub Coordinator) to find out more about how you can use these resources or to get involved with the Hub or fill out the general interest form to see if there are other ways you might be able to plug in!

If you are a CUNY student

You are an integral part of the next generation of climate justice advocates and there are many opportunities to grow your knowledge and apply your skills through the Hub! You can apply to join the Climate Justice Fellowship or the Hub team through the general interest form. If you have interest in either of these opportunities—or getting connected in general—reach out to Jazmyn Blackburn (Hub Coordinator for CUNY), Forrest Sparks (Project Manager), or Maithreyi Rajeshkumar (Climate Justice Fellowship & Academy Program Lead).

If you are a faculty member or student at another university

We would love to hear from you about what brought you to this website and what your institution is doing to build bridges between communities and universities towards a more equitable and environmentally sustainable future! If you are interested in learning more about the Hub, sharing your own experience with us, or discussing opportunities to collaborate, please reach out to our team at [email protected] or fill out the general interest form, and we will direct you to the right folks to assist with your inquiry.

If you are a member of an NYC community organization

You can learn more about community organizations like yours that are making strides to achieve climate and environmental justice in NYC by visiting NYC-EJA’s website. You can also reach out to Eddie Bautistia (Director of NYC-EJA), Eunice Ko (Deputy Director of NYC-EJA), or Alan Minor (Hub Coordinator for NYC-EJA) to learn more about the campaigns that members of NYC-EJA are working on and how to support and collaborate.