PNW Just Futures Institute Launches at the University of Oregon (2021)
From Around the O.
The University of Oregon has received a $4.52 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a new initiative envisioning a transformative research platform for racial and climate justice. It is the largest humanities award in UO history.
The Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice will be a multidisciplinary collaboration between leaders from the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences and College of Design, alongside other partners across campus and institutions in the region, including the University of Idaho and Whitman College. With capacity made possible by the Mellon funding, the institute will tackle the intertwined issues of racial and climate justice and work toward a more just future for the region.
A second award from the Mellon Foundation will expand educational programs for incarcerated Oregonians.
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“We are tremendously grateful to the Mellon Foundation for recognizing the innovative thinking of our faculty,” said UO president Michael H. Schill. “This award will support our researchers’ work to address racial and climate justice through a uniquely humanistic lens. It will empower the UO to be a visionary leader in this arena.”
The initiative grew out of the UO’s Center for Environmental Futures in the College of Arts and Sciences, also currently funded by Mellon, and was inspired by an urgent desire to address the ways that the climate crisis and social injustice are raging throughout the Pacific Northwest. The events of summer 2020, including wildfires that forced 40,000 Oregonians to evacuate their homes and protests of racial injustice following the killing of George Floyd, clarified the need to address deep-seated issues stemming from the intersectional problem of racism and climate change.
Those issues have long been concerns of the faculties in the UO’s Environmental Studies Program and the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies.
“Oregon has a dark history of racial discrimination,” said John Arroyo, professor of planning, public policy and management and director of the new institute. “The Mellon award will allow the UO and our educational and community-based partners to co-create deep and meaningful equity work that will envision and realize what a just the future looks like for the Pacific Northwest.”