Lecturer I in International and Comparative Studies
INTLSTD 40: International Studies Advanced Seminar: Global Climate Justice
Dr. David Zeglen’s journey began in an oil town in Canada, recalling that he has always had a “sort of interest intellectually in globalization and climate change”, where he witnessed the disproportionate impacts of the industry on Indigenous communities downstream of the plant. He also pulls on nearly 10 years of global travel and experience as a teacher in a United Nations refugee camp in Palestine, studying North Korean human rights from South Korea, and traveling with an anarchist theatre collective in Vienna, Turkey, much of Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean.
Every student has a different eye-opening moment in the course, but Dr. Zeglen specifically mentioned two lessons that consistently resonate with the class. The first is when he has students read How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm, a nonfiction book arguing that sabotage is a logical and necessary form of climate activism. Students also learn about the women’s suffrage movement in the 20th century and two important strategies for a successful movement: non-violent civil disobedience and a radical flank willing to engage in sabotage. Later in the semester students learn about La Via Campensina, which was formed in 1993 and “defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty” in 180 local and national organizations in 81 countries, representing around 200 million small-scale food producers. This movement gets students to think about what the United States would have to do to support food sovereignty in the Global South, as Dr. Zeglen stresses that “we’re going to have to farm more [and] we can’t rely upon all this labor that’s being imported into the country and exploited heavily” if we are going to survive the global climate crisis humanely. This idea can bring up some uncomfortable conversations about what we need to do, what we need to change, and what we would have to give up but Dr. Zeglen wants students to “sit in that discomfort if they’re meaningfully thinking about and serious about global climate change.”
One of the major points that Dr. Zeglen hopes that students recognize and understand is that “whatever benefits they accrue by living in a society or a country in the Global North, and however much they want to think about the local, is very dependent on exploitation in the Global South.” He urges his students to move beyond a narrow focus on local climate issues and to embrace a broader, more inclusive perspective that recognizes the interconnectedness of global communities. Through this approach, he hopes that students recognize that “everyone is my neighbor, not just people that are directly my neighbors, my neighbors live in the Global South too.” To foster this expanded worldview, Dr. Zeglen has his students examine various climate social movements. These movements often challenge the consumption and production patterns prevalent in the Global North, highlighting how these patterns contribute to global inequalities. By studying these movements, students can better understand the systemic nature of these issues and the global impact of their local actions.
While Dr. Zeglen prefers conversations with students, he does have them do a few paper-based essays covering climate social movements in the Global North and South. The first essay asks students to think about what democracy means in the context of climate change in the Global North. To Dr. Zeglen, while it is important to go to the ballot boxes and advocate to local government officials, it includes a “whole other range of possibilities in which you can exercise your rights as a democratic citizen.” To look at those strategies, he has students choose a specific climate social movement in the Global North and “realistically assess the strategy that that climate movement deployed.” Students examine if they took into account local and national contexts, if targets were clearly established, if they were on a reasonable timeline, and if the movement was built for the long term. Using the movements students have studied throughout the course, the final paper looks at social movements in the Global South, so students can think about how there are shared and different strategies in the context of climate movements in the global system.
Dr. Zeglen also has students write a current events essay where they examine a climate movement of their choice (covered in class or not). He does this to emphasize how social movements are living social experiments in the democratic process. During this portion of the course, he doesn’t lecture, instead leading students in discussion “because we’re really just trying to figure this out together.” The conversations that come out of this portion of the course elicit some disagreements but overall he thinks this is one of the most powerful sections of the course because they are able to maintain engaging and productive conversations.
Dr. Zeglen’s advice for other educators involves prioritizing conversations with students in the classroom: “I learned so much from my students… [telling me about] struggles they’re dealing with that they don’t always understand is climate-related. It’s my job to provide that context for them.” He encourages other educators to hold open and intellectual dialogue with students rather than just giving definitions of problems and thinking that students can immediately translate the issues to their personal and professional experiences without speaking with them about their own lives To this point, he says, “always constantly have a dialogue between theory and practice going back and forth, rather than emphasizing one to the detriment of the other.”
Students who are interested in global climate issues can take INTLSTD 401: Global Climate Justice with Dr. Zeglen in the fall or winter.
As a part of the Year of Sustainability, we are interested in sharing, uplifting, and highlighting stories about the people who make up LSA and have experience teaching about sustainability. We sat down with a series of LSA faculty to discuss their background and courses and will feature these conversations in our Faculty Spotlight series.
To contact the LSA Year of Sustainability Team, please contact sustainable-lsa@umich.edu.
