One academic claims that kids was” come out with an ecological studies amount and really never know anything more than a high school student about true knowledge.”
Students at City University of New York Graduate Center in recent years have been awarded diplomas for their work that includes: reimagining “experiences of formerly incarcerated Dark people” using” Black Feminist thought,” examining the 1521″ Black-led” Christmas Rebellion on La Espaola island, examining whether California prison officials purposefully promote racial conflict among captives, and demonstrating “how Black people and white settlers understood Quebec’s geography of isolation as one where the environment could be used to
Although it is possible to assume that the department’s story or African American studies department awarded these PhDs, this is incorrect. They hail from CUNY’s Earth and Environmental Science system.
World and Environmental Science has no fewer than three Diplomas awarded for non-native papers. It’s been done for years. Researchers are seeing both sides ‘ advantages and disadvantages, so whether it should be left up for debate.
EES is a skill that deals with everything that relates to the atmosphere. That definitely includes studying how political problems affect, or are affected by, the atmosphere”, said Matt Burgess, an associate professor of economics at the University of Wyoming, who previously worked in CU Boulder’s ecological studies system.
EES is a discipline that deals with everything that relates to the environment. That certainly includes studying how sociopolitical issues affect, or are affected by, the environment”, he told The Fix via email in a recent interview.
” For example”, Burgess noted,” I know EES professors who study the effects of climate change on prison conditions in the south, where there often is n’t air conditioning”.
” That is a perfectly legitimate line of inquiry in the EES, and I could think of scenarios where one might want to interview prisoners or look into the effects of extreme heat on prison violence as part of that inquiry.”
Not everyone agrees, however.
In an interview with The Fix in October, Riverland College’s resident geologist Sadredin” Dean” Moosavi claimed that students could” come out with an environmental studies degree and really not know anything more than a high school student about actual science.”
He noted that historically, universities combined their geology and physics departments with those in their college of science, while integrating geography and other humanities disciplines. However, Moosavi claimed that in order to reduce administrative burdens, geology and geography programs have frequently been combined with Earth science programs.
Environmental science programs, which traditionally could be affiliated with geology, geography, or biology, he added, were brought into these larger umbrella programs as well.
According to him, these kinds of prearranged academic unions have resulted in the creation of programs where scientists working in physics and chemistry are collaborating with academicians who are either primarily focused on policy or” who really have more in common with ] scholars studying African American and ethnic studies.”
” This”, he said,” creates huge problems”, later adding,” The oil and water do not mix well”.
According to Burgess,” I believe there is value in natural and social sciences coexisting in departments that study the environment, as many intriguing research questions cross the lines of natural and social science.”
The College Fix contacted Kieren Howard, executive director of CUNY’s Earth and Environmental Sciences program, to inquire about how the recent scholarship that focused on African-American studies fits into an EES program, and whether a science program’s doctorates program could encourage students to pursue research that is more objective or scientific than is appropriate.
As new programs develop under a new academic paradigm that emphasizes critical studies and diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts, the debate raises a more urgent issue.
Stanford’s Earth System Science program, for example, houses geologists, biologists, biogeochemists and other researchers focused on work in the hard sciences. However, it also has several current, former, or associated faculty that now hold positions in the school’s newly launched Department of Environmental Social Sciences where they study social, behavioral, and psychological components of infectious disease and climate change.
The Earth and Environmental Sciences, or EES, graduate program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, similarly houses seismologists, paleontologists, and atmospheric scientists, but also cultural geographers and environmental psychologists.
Additionally, according to Moosavi, this can cause intra-participational conflicts, make geology and related fields more susceptible to DEI influence, and sometimes even give graduates more scientific credibility than they should.
Using his alma mater, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, as an example, Moosavi pointed out that the college, when it was in operation in the 1990s, primarily offered degrees in the natural and applied sciences but also had a policy-focused environmental studies program.
Because of this, he claimed, it was “really difficult for]graduates of that program ] to make meaningful contributions outside of the political realm where they could talk about issues without necessarily knowing what they were talking about.”
Due to the social justice and environmental justice movements, Moosavi said,” a lot of power has been given to people from these programs even though they still do n’t know anything about science.”
Burgess said he concurred that some of Moosavi’s criticisms “describe real circumstances that sometimes occur”
According to Burgess,” I think the tradeoff is that having social scientists and humanists (especially social scientists ) working together in the same department as physical scientists can lead to collaborations that span all of those disciplines,” ” How to balance those considerations is something each university needs to figure out, but I do n’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all answer”.
” You can either create silos, by separating everyone, or you create interdisciplinary departments whose graduates have a diversity of skills and trainings”, he said. Each school must determine what is in the best interest of the students.
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