Trainings & Events

Antioch University’s School for the Environment and Sustainability is embarking on a year-long celebration to mark 50 years of community, excellence, impact and leadership. They are initiating a comprehensive series of events and international field study opportunities to mark this milestone. This year-long celebration uplifts their proud tradition of educating, inspiring and launching generations of environmental leaders who are dedicated to advancing a more just, sustainable and healthy future.

Environmental justice relies on democratic power, policies, practices, and institutions. Democracy is born through dialogue. Democracy has been called the worst form of government except for all others which have been tried. Democracy is not something we have, it is something we do, and if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu.

At their best, democratic systems create spaces of belonging, the rule of law, justice, and robust participation in the decisions that affect their members’ lives. Increasing rights, protection, and democratic representation and participation has been the work of environmental and social justice advocates in the United States and elsewhere for generations. New forms of rights are emerging, including the right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature.

Democracy in its most familiar forms, however, has often floundered in the face of systemic injustice. Democracy has also repeatedly been used as a shield to further environmental injustice and colonial extraction both domestically and internationally. How can we work toward justice while reckoning with and disrupting this disturbing legacy? How do we understand the importance, possibilities, and approaches for centering environmental justice in our contemporary democratic systems and processes? What solutions-oriented pathways already exist? What practices will no longer serve us? This colloquia series aims to support and enliven the discourse around these and other questions. Most fundamentally these colloquia seek to build our collective capacity for engaging in democracy to cultivate environmental justice.