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The Anxieties of Democracy program’s Working Group on Climate Change, in collaboration with Princeton University, hosted “Witnessing Professionals and Climate Change” a workshop on the ethics of professionals in the face of climate change. Chaired by Professor Nancy Rosenblum and Professor Melissa Lane, “Witnessing Professionals” featured panels with lawyers, scientists, public health, and university officials in order to discuss the role of professionals and institutions in combating climate change.

Video proceedings of the workshop may be found here. Some of the presenters have also made lightly-edited transcripts of their remarks available (links in the agenda below).

This event was made possible with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Agenda

9:00 am – Welcome: Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University and director of the University Center for Human Values

9:15 am – Introduction: Nancy Rosenblum, Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University (emerita)

9:30-10:00 am – Witnessing Professionals: Robert Jay Lifton, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Columbia University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychology at the City University of New York

10:00-11:15 am – Panel 1: Scientists
Chair: Elke Weber, Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University

Robert Socolow, Princeton University, Climate Futures Initiative and Carbon Mitigation Initiative [Transcript]

Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University

11:30-12:45 pm – Panel 2: Public Health
Chair: Adriana Petryna, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania

Patrick Kinney, Beverly A. Brown Professor for the Improvement of Urban Health, Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Lise Van Susteren, The Climate Project; Our Children’s Trust

Mark A. Mitchell, President, Mitchell Environmental Health Associates; Co-Chair, National Medical Association Commission on Environental Health; Founder and Senior Policy Advisor, Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice

12:45-1:30 pm – Lunch Break

1:30 – 2:30 pm – Panel 3: Law
Chair: Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law [Transcript]

Justice Antonio Herman Benjamin, National High Court, Brazil; Chair of the World Commission on Environmental Law

Katrina F. Kuh, Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University [Transcript]

2:30-4:00 pm – Panel 4: Academia
Chair: Nancy Rosenblum, Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University (emerita)

Harold T. Shapiro, President Emeritus and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University

Jessica F. Green, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at New York University
Jacob Lipton, Program Director of the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School

4:00-5:00 pm – Summary and Discussion
Dennis F. Thompson, Professor of Government and the Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (emeritus) [Transcript]

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