Newsletter #13: Who belongs on the climate front lines?

Written By Cornell on Fire

A call to action in uncertain times

Dear Cornell on Fire,

What will 2025 bring? Lots of us are scared right now. Will we be punished for speaking truth to power, protesting, pushing back against injustice?

We write as a professor, a student, and an administrator to say that people often overestimate the risks of speaking up—that’s one of the ways we get misled into compliance and inaction.

Bill McKibben once said something about risk that hit us hard. Tenured professors should be on the front lines of the climate struggle, he argued, because we are “the most bulletproof people in the entire world.” It’s true. One of us, a tenured faculty member at Cornell, can make a big ruckus and not risk her job. Tenure protections aren’t unlimited: faculty can’t commit crimes, for example, but we have more job security than anyone—except maybe a Supreme Court justice.

But while faculty can make a lot of noise, our words have limited power on their own. We are most effective when faculty team up with students (who have ideas, energy, and strength in numbers) and administrators (who can implement change).

Take the movement to divest Cornell’s endowment, for example. Noisy faculty worked with organized student groups, led by Climate Justice Cornell, undergraduate and graduate student assemblies, and a manager who used his past experience working in Congress to drum up votes in the Staff Assembly. Pooling energy, skills, risks, and resources, we were successful in 2020.

Fear is not the only obstacle to action. Most of us are also wildly busy people. Students juggle academic, athletic, and extracurricular activity; staff positions can be intensely stressful; and faculty work all hours to produce rigorous knowledge for the public good. (A scientist once told us she was grateful for the Thanksgiving break so that she could spend all day in her lab without being interrupted.) Faculty also pour tons of energy into teaching. And they need to keep on top of the latest work in their fields, write grants, present research at conferences…. We won’t bore you with the list.  

All of this means it can be hard to rouse Cornellians to action on climate. What if Prof X needs every waking minute to finish an article on zero-carbon electricity—isn’t that also valuable?

 Yes.

 And no.

 The climate crisis actually makes the Cornell community work harder. Not only because the intensifying storms, wildfires, droughts, and floods affect our lives and our research sites, but also because Big Oil has deliberately undermined scientists, harassing our colleagues right here at Cornell. 

The longer we support fossil fuels, the harder we have to struggle to overcome public skepticism about evidence-based knowledge. Teaching depressed and hopeless students, meanwhile, makes a mockery of the labor faculty do to prepare them for rich and flourishing lives. Cornell’s ties to fossil fuels are a little like using one hand to steal from the other. 

So let’s think seriously about the risks we take—without exaggerating them. And let’s focus on distributing risk, so that the most vulnerable among us are not shouldering most of the danger. 

And then let’s focus on pooling our energies so that we don’t get depleted. An action now could save us grueling work and pain later. 

Even an hour a month is useful. And just about everyone has that to spare, right? 


Sincerely,

A Cornell professor, student, and administrator, united

Caroline Levine, Professor of Literatures in English

Katharine Turk, Biological Sciences and Environment & Sustainability, '27

Sara Eddleman, Associate Dean for Administration in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning

Inspired to take action? Here are 5 effective steps:

  1. If you are outraged that Cornell faculty and staff retirement funds are invested in fossil fuels, take action by signing the TIAA-Divest petition for Seven Universities (including Cornell) to Stop Investing in Climate Destruction Now. Caroline Levine (an author of this very newsletter) is centrally involved in TIAA-Divest and can point to effective ways to devote even one hour of your time to the cause (cel235@cornell.edu).

  2. If you are an academic who believes academic freedom requires independence from fossil fuel research funding, sign the Fossil Free Research open letter and share it with your colleagues. Your signature will support the work of our alliance partner Fossil Free Cornell, whose first report on Cornell’s fossil fuel ties was covered in The Guardian last fall. You can also make a personal pledge to refuse fossil fuel funding for your scientific research (led by Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island). 

  3. Read our reports on the state of climate action at Cornell. What you need to know to demand the change we need.

  4. Follow university-related activism for climate justice on Instagram: TIAA-Divest! | Fossil Free Cornell | Cornell on Fire | NAISAC | Sunrise Ithaca | Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island | Campus Climate Network | and many more! 

  5. If you believe that Cornell should take climate action that is commensurate with the scale and scope of the emergency, sign the Climate Demands to Cornell. Open to *everyone*!

Celebrate the Student Assembly’s Passage of the Resolution to Improve Cornell's Climate Action Plan!

On January 23, 2025, the Student Assembly voted unanimously to improve and accelerate Cornell’s Climate Action Plan (SA Resolution 20). Congratulations to the student team behind the resolution, with a special shout out to the Eco Justice Solidarity Program and the Student Assembly Environmental Committee! The resolution is now on Kotlikoff’s desk for action. Stay tuned for action steps to support its passage!

  • Are you a faculty or staff member interested in introducing a similar resolution to your respective Senate/Assembly at Cornell? Please email us at connect@cornellonfire.org.

Engage the Wider Movement:

  • Join concerned citizens and scientists in opposing Cornell’s newest proposal for yet more artificial turf fields. Their latest proposal is currently under review by the Ithaca Town Planning Board despite an ongoing lawsuit. We need to submit a strong set of written public comments to the Planning Board in advance of their next meeting on Tuesday, February 18 (6:30pm, in person at Town Hall or via this Zoom link). Write to Zero Waste Ithaca (info@zerowasteithaca.org ) or Cornell on Fire (connect@cornellonfire.org) to get involved with next steps. 

  • Extinction Rebellion Climate Vigils 11am every Saturday at Chase Bank - the worst bank on Earth - at the East end of the Ithaca Commons.

In case you missed it. Catch up on our latest work:

Thank you for reading this far and engaging in the number-one frontline for climate action: your attention. 

Cornell on Fire

Cornell on Fire is a campus-community movement calling on Cornell to confront the climate emergency.

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