From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency

 An emergency is an urgent situation requiring immediate action despite thousands of Higher Education institutions around the world having issued their own "Climate emergency declaration" [UNEP, 2019] and the widespread recognition that universities play a key role in contributing to the public good, the HE sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the urgency commensurate with the warnings-despite the fact that these warnings emanate largely from academics working in HE-and is largely continuing with business as usual.

From Publications to Public Actions Although an explicit theory of change is lacking, academia appears to operate under the assumption that if academics generate information, then society's leaders will use that information to make wise decisions that promote the public good.

These include a hypercompetitive academic environment where professional reputations and university hiring and promotion decisions are judged by a narrow focus on high-impact publications rather than other forms of real-world impact, and the increasing precarity of academic employment, which may leave academics both overstretched and unwilling to engage in activities which do not directly contribute to their career prospects.

Facilitating Engagement, Advocacy, and Activism Given the urgency of the CEE, we suggest that universities must expand their conception of how they contribute to the public good, and explicitly recognise engagement with advocacy as part of the work mandate of their academic staff.

While universities have an important role in facilitating greater engagement and advocacy by the whole academic community, their willingness to do so may be limited by the increasing corporatisation and marketization of higher education institutions.

While we recognise that some of the suggestions are rather incremental and managerial, and therefore themselves unsuited to an emergency context, we offer them as a starting point for further discussion and anticipate that the roles of academics and universities will continue to evolve through experimentation and public debate as the planetary emergency deepens.

Nor are such actions limited to environmental and climate issues, as 2020 has seen the rise of academic advocacy and activism related to the Black Lives Matter movement and longstanding calls to decolonise university curricula, as well as in response to the UK government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainability/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.679019/full