During Fall 2023, High Meadows Environmental Institute environmental fellow Nathan Jessee taught a ProCES sponsored freshman seminar, Environmental and Climate Justice. The class examined the history of the environmental justice movement, learning from Black and Latinx struggles against environmental racism, Indigenous movements for cultural survival and land rights, and coastal community responses to inequitable policy and planning. The course provided students with two unique opportunities for community-engaged experiential learning: participation in an Indigenous community art exhibit and an environmental justice tour of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

The art exhibit, entitled “Our Knowledge is Power: The Cultures of Beauty and Survival in Isle de Jean Charles, LA and Shishmaref, AK,” was on display at The Arts Council of Princeton between September 9-30, 2023. Curated by Inupiat photographer Dennis Davis and Jean Charles Choctaw Nation community member Chantel Comardelle, the photographs and captions showcased the devastating impacts of extreme weather and industrialization and the beauty, power, and expertise embedded within traditional lifeways. The initiative was co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology; the High Meadows Environmental Institute; the History Department; the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment; Lewis Center for the Arts; Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities; Fluid Futures Forum and Environmental Humanities and Social Transformation Colloquium; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton; and National Science Foundation Grant #1921045: Adaptations to Repetitive Flooding: Understanding Cross-Cultural and Legal Possibilities for Long-Term Solutions to Flooding Disaster.

Students immersed themselves in the exhibit, participating in an artist talk and film screening event and a listening session with Dennis Davis that focused on the Indigenous knowledges and self-determination, climate change, and policy and planning failures associated with relocation. The co-curricular activities supplemented in-class conceptual learning. For example, as students engaged the exhibit, they also read about how histories of forced displacement have severed generations of Indigenous peoples from the ecologies in which their institutions and expertise have been cultivated what Colville scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker refers to as “environmental deprivation” and discussed the implications for policy that aims to support just and equitable climate adaptation.

The course also included student participation in an Environmental Justice Tour of Asbury Park, NJ co-organized with Kerry Butch (Asbury Park Reporter) and David Eisenhauer (Dartmouth University). Stops at the historical waterfront boardwalk, areas affected by eminent domain abuse, neighborhoods, parks, and community centers encouraged conversations about the intersection of race and racism, inequality, community advocacy, coastal redevelopment, and climate change.

Local and regional experts on the tour included:

• Kay Harris (Founder of the Asbury Park Museum and the only black business owner remaining on the Asbury Park waterfront)
• Susan Maynard (Former Executive Director of the West Side Community Center and Asbury Park Board of Education, Asbury Park Consortium)
• Kathleen Mumma (organizer of Save Asbury's Waterfront movement, Asbury Park Green Team)
• Rita Marano (Former owner of the Kingsley Deli, which was taken by eminent domain)
• Werner Baumgartner (Official Historian of the City of Asbury Park)
• Christina Eliopoulos (Filmmaker of Greetings from Asbury Park)
• Lorraine Stone (Writer and performer, first Black female reporter hired at the Asbury Park Press)
• Felicia Simmons (Asbury Park Affordable Housing Coalition and Executive Director of the West Side Community Center)
• Tracy Rogers (Asbury Park Affordable Housing Coalition)
• Sheila Etienne (Childcare Provider and former President of the Board of Education)
• Nicky Sheats (New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, Center for the Urban Environment at the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research at Kean University)
• Jason Ajiake (New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance)

Following the tour, students conducted follow-up interviews with community organizers to deepen their understanding. The interviews enabled students to ask further questions about Asbury Park and community advocacy, drawing on insights from the shared tour experience and classroom learning. This work will inform a co-authored Asbury Park Reporter feature about community organizing in the town and a panel on community engaged scholarship at Princeton this coming Spring. FRS 191: Environmental and Climate Justice not only equipped students with a historical and conceptual understanding of social and environmental forces that influence their lives but also fostered a learning environment that forged new relationships within the broader community.

“I have cherished the opportunity to teach these brilliant and hardworking students and to build relationships across campus and beyond. I am grateful to the FRS program, ProCES, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Anthropology, and other units who made our learning this semester possible,” said Dr. Jessee, reflecting on the class. “I believe co-curricular initiatives that bring together interdisciplinary intellectual exchange, community-engagement, and innovative experiential pedagogies are central to enhancing Princeton's capacity to serve humanity.”