Issues of environmental justice are growing in importance in several
areas. On the domestic front it has long been recognized that environmental
amenities on the one hand and toxic waste sites on the other are not uniformly
distributed in reference to income group, class or ethnic communities. On
an international scale as well there are marked and increasing disparities
in the world community between those who have access to clean and safe resources
and those who do not. Disparities of this nature may be the result of historical
circumstance, contemporary economic and trade relations or simply inadequate
or inappropriate governmental regulation. Whatever their source, it is clear
that an interdisciplinary approach is needed both to understand and ameliorate
these problems.
With initial support from the university Provost's Fund for
Interfaculty Collaboration and the University Committee on
Environment the interfaculty Working Group on Environmental
Justice was originally created at Harvard as an interdisciplinary and university-wide
effort to examine issues of environmental justice both within this country
and around the world. The Law School, the Kennedy School, the School of
Public Health, the Divinity School, the Business School, the School of Education
and various departments within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences all contain
people and resources devoted to exploring problems of environmental justice
in one form or another. Our attempt in this university-wide effort was to
bring together faculty members from these schools and departments to meet
monthly and share their understandings and perspectives on these matters.
Through these exchanges we felt we could better assess how
Harvard's various departments, faculties and schools might contribute to
analyzing and resolving some of the problems in this important new area of
public concern and policy consideration.
Since 2007 the emphasis of the Working Group has been to convene and present a annual university course in the Spring Semester through the Harvard Extension School. This course, entitled, "An Introduction to Environmental Justice" has been conducted on campus at Harvard but it has been made available as well as a "distance education" course through the online facilities of the Harvard Extension School.