The Mellon Foundation recently gave a nearly $4 million grant to the University of Michigan, which will be used to open an “Environmental Justice + Humanities Hub.”

The “Environmental Justice + Humanities Hub” will “forge connections between students and communities working toward environmental justice.” The new center will also develop a new curriculum, introduce a new undergraduate minor and graduate certificate, and create positions for a new professor and lecturer.

According to The University Record, environmental justice is the idea that “no community should be disproportionately harmed by pollution, climate change and other environmental concerns” and that everyone deserves to enjoy a healthy environment.

Environmental Justice is a phenomenon that has often been addressed from the perspectives of “science, public health and engineering fields.”

However, the addition of partners with humanities training has often been sought after by “communities at the forefront of environmental justice,” the university said.

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According to The Mellon Foundation’s website, it is a philanthropic association dedicated to supporting communities through the power of the arts and humanities.

Scott Turner, the Director of Science Programs for the National Association of Scholars told Campus Reform “in general, philanthropic spending constitutes a relatively small proportion of university funding. The bulk of revenues coming into universities these days is from federal sources.” 

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Turner compared humanities and environmental justice majors to “various grievance studies majors (i.e. Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, etc.) that have proliferated on college campuses over the past couple of decades.

Turner said that the term environmental justice “is a synonym for an equity agenda dressed up behind a façade of ‘science’ … ‘environmental justice’ demands redress by restructuring the world’s energy economy to give the “aggrieved” more money.” 

Turner says that the grant “raises the deeper question: Should universities be places for intellectual growth, or training grounds for a future activist class? This initiative will fund the latter.”