Universities on Fire

Higher Education in the Climate Crisis

By: Bryan Alexander

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Hardcover | 19 May 2023

At a Glance

Hardcover
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.9 x 23.7 x 2.6

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Scientists agree that we are on the precipice of a global climate crisis. How will it transform colleges and universities?

In 2019, intense fires in the San Francisco Bay Area closed universities and drove afflicted people to shelter at other campuses. At the same time, extraordinary fires ravaged eastern Australia. Several universities responded by promising material and research support to damaged businesses while also hosting refugees and emergency response teams in student residence halls. This was an echo of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on Tulane University in 2005.

In Universities on Fire, futurist Bryan Alexander explores higher education during an age of unfolding climate crisis. Powered by real-world examples and the latest research, Alexander assesses practical responses and strategies by surveying contemporary programs and academic climate research from around the world. He establishes a model of how academic institutions may respond and offers practical pathways forward for higher education. How will the two main purposes of education teaching and research change as the world heats up? Alexander positions colleges and universities in the broader social world, from town-gown relationships to connections between how campuses and civilization as a whole respond to this epochal threat.

Current studies of climate change trace the likely implications across a range of domains, from agriculture to policy, urban design, technology, culture, and human psychology. However, few books have predicted or studied the effects of the climate crisis on colleges and universities. By connecting climate research to a deep, futures-informed analysis of academia, Universities on Fire explores how climate change will fundamentally reshape higher education.

About the Author

Bryan Alexander (MANASSAS, VA) is an internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher. A senior scholar at Georgetown University and the creator of the Future Trends Forum, he is the author of Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education and The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media.

Industry Reviews

[Universities on Fire] contains much...of value--from how colleges and universities in the United States help the towns they are in to develop environmental plans, to telling us how universities, like Pepperdine University in Southern California, have had to develop extensive fire prevention plans because of the danger that wildfires will sweep through the region.

-- "University World News"

[Alexander] give gives a measured analysis of both the literal and metaphorical fires that the sector faces. He...looks at the difficulties universities might face in a world of mass migration, as ecosystems collapse and species die out, and offers helpful surveys of how universities could respond in their teaching and research, and in their relationships with both local and global communities.

-- "Times Literary Supplement"

Brisk, inspiring, and sobering.

-- "University Affairs"

Is your college prepared for climate change? Bryan Alexander's new book, Universities on Fire, is a structured series of speculations about what that might mean. It's a useful, and sometimes harrowing, reality check. I won't be able to stop thinking about this one for a long time.

--Matt Reed "Inside Higher Ed"

We all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Bryan Alexander for his efforts to provide a common framework and scenarios to enable universities leaders to develop proactive strategies and policies to meet current and future climate change challenges. Through his book, Universities on FireBryan has helped to push the climate crisis to the center of higher ed conversations.

--Joshua Kim "Inside Higher Ed"

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