Using the Pulpit of the Presidency for Environmentalism

When Nathan M. Pusey ’28 ascended to the Harvard presidency in 1953, Joseph McCarthy was beginning his second term as the junior senator from Wisconsin. Pusey was a respected academic from Lawrence College; McCarthy, an opportunistic demagogue spreading jingoism across postwar America. The two men had little to do with each other, and had Pusey been elected the head of a less influential institution, McCarthy may never have heard his name. But Pusey, as president of Harvard, quickly realized he had tremendous influence over the nation’s academic discourse. He chose to challenge creeping McCarthyism by rallying academics behind free speech and the independence of universities, leading the circle of critics who saved America from paranoid implosion. It is no coincidence, then, that he is remembered as one of the strongest and most effective Harvard presidents of this century: “the transformer of modern Harvard” in the words of Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Rev. Peter J. Gomes ’68.

We now have a new president, and the year 1953 is on few people’s minds. But Harvard is no farther from the center of America’s attention than it was then. When Drew G. Faust takes the corner office in Massachusetts Hall this summer, we imagine our new president will waste no time in championing a cause. And in the twenty-first century, that cause must be environmental sustainability.

Environmentalism is newly ascendant in America, urged on by the growing realization that the effects of climate change are likely to present the greatest threats to international development and our own quality of life over the next decades. The environment, long marginalized as a special interest, is becoming the galvanizing issue of this generation. The environmental problems that demand our attention today will only continue to multiply. It is imperative that we start thinking about them seriously now.

The presidency of Harvard is the perfect pulpit from which to tackle these issues. With our influential community of scholars, we have the world’s premier forum to face the most interdisciplinary of all problems. Addressing global questions of sustainability demands the attention of all our faculties, both as academics and as human beings. Our most basic ways of life demand that we provide real answers about how we will produce energy, build homes, and grow food in an increasingly strained world, answers that require political finesse, scientific rigor, innovative design, and legal savvy.

Change, of course, begins at home, and Faust enters her term with momentum already waiting for her. The Harvard undergraduate body voted in December by an 88 percent vote that the University ought to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 89 percent of 1990 levels by 2020; the student council of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences agreed. The University already runs its own Green Campus Initiative, which has done tremendous work in bringing our campus up to the latest environmental standards, investing over six million dollars in 85 environmental projects and $100,000 in renewable energy research.

But these efforts have yet to be championed from above—their overwhelming support among students and many administrators has yet to be matched by a concerted push to set sustainability at the center of Harvard’s plan for the future.

That future holds enormous opportunities. President Faust will oversee the largest expansion of Harvard’s campus since Pusey’s tenure. When Harvard breaks new ground in Allston, President Faust ought to emulate Pusey’s moral leadership and boldly assert environmental standards for a new century. Harvard is an academic exemplar sitting inside a “city upon a hill.” It will not have many chances to define itself in bricks and mortar like it will in the next few years. Its leaders must provide a vision of a sustainable 21st century world.

The project of good environmental stewardship, though, is not limited to within Harvard’s walls.  Faust ought to begin by committing our own campus to the highest of standards. But to ignore our transformative influence on the outside world is to default on the responsibility that the Harvard presidency carries. Today environmentalism occupies a peculiar place between research and action; it is gathering steam but its whistle has not yet rung. It awaits its champions. It has found one in Al Gore; it could use many others. As she sets the tone for academic institutions everywhere, Faust can show the world that the environment must be a cardinal concern for both institutions and young leaders. The radiating effects of the Harvard presidency have already been seen in the news coverage of her appointment; let her now use that power to lead.

For, in the end, we will have to address environmental issues whether we want to or not. In the face of climate change and resource depletion, the vexing issues we obsess over now will suddenly seem very small. The standard-bearers of the future will be those who provide compelling answers to crucial environmental questions. Let us hope that Faust is willing to carry Harvard forward under this green banner.


Spring Greeney ’09 is an environmental science and public policy concentrator in Pforzheimer House. Karen A. McKinnon ’10 lives in Mower Hall. Garrett G. D. Nelson ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies and visual and environmental studies concentrator in Cabot House. All are members of the Board of the Environmental Action Committee.