At the Boston Globe Summit, UMass Boston Faculty, Staff and Students Tell Stories of Making an Impact
Luminaries from art, science, business and politics gathered to give lectures and discussions on this year’s most important issues. UMass Boston was a proud sponsor of this year’s Boston Globe Summit.
The theme for this year’s Boston Globe Summit—Revolutionary Ideas—provided a platform for impactful stories on climate adaptation, the challenges facing higher education, and other pressing issues. Held on November 18 and 19 at the House of Blues in Boston, the two-day event prominently featured UMass Boston faculty and students across multiple panels and conversations, showcasing the university’s deep expertise on topics ranging from higher education to climate change and economic justice.
On the first day, UMass Boston Chancellor Marcello Suárez-Orozco introduced a panel on the future of higher education. He highlighted the perils that colleges and universities now face, as they must navigate an increasingly tense social climate.
“For us in public education, the supreme value of our scholarly endeavors is their translation to the greater good,” Suárez-Orozco said. “The academic freedom to do so is not a privilege; it’s foundational! It’s essential to the practice of democratic citizenship.”
The panel’s participants included Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth, Stephen Spinelli, president of Babson College, and Greg Weiner, president of Assumption University. The panel was moderated by Diti Kohli, a reporter for the Boston Globe. These experts in higher education discussed how colleges and universities are navigating America’s changing sociopolitical climate, even as academic freedom comes under threat.
The panelists stressed the need to clarifying universities’ role in American society: Universities are there to teach the skills and values that make young people into good citizens, not to conduct advocacy. Despite the ongoing threats to academic freedom, the panelists said that the current generation of students should not be underestimated.
Climate change was also at the forefront of many discussions at the Globe Summit. On the first day, representatives from UMass Boston’s School for the Environment discussed “Turning the Tide on Climate Change.”
The panel was moderated by Elizabeth Sweet, the associate dean of UMass Boston’s School for the Environment and a professor of urban planning and development, and featured Massachusetts Deputy Climate Chief Aladdine Joroff; Katherine Dafforn, co-director of the Stone Living Lab and distinguished professor in the School for the Environment; Laura Castro Diaz, assistant professor at the School for the Environment; and Kayla Bradley, a PhD student at UMass Boston and expert in science communications. The panelists reviewed ways in which the daunting problems of climate change can, through careful planning, become manageable issues that local communities can contribute to. They outlined how everyone in a community, from kids to busy working adults, can become involved in disaster mitigation planning, environmental science, and climate justice.
As Dafforn said, “I get hope going to work every day, because I get to work with such an amazing group of researchers and students who aren't giving up, who realize that there's a big job ahead of us, and that we can do this collectively. And we can do this by reaching out to the community, reaching out to stakeholders who have the means, together, to move the needle forward.”
Some events raised the specter of economic insecurity. Christian E. Weller, a UMass Boston professor of public policy, participated in a panel on the middle class in Massachusetts. The panelists highlighted the economic importance of the middle class and discussed ways in which the state could better support a middle-class population.
Even in the face of such serious topics, there was time for levity: Ben Cohen, a co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s, hosted an ice-cream social on the second day of the Summit, and the first day’s finale was a fireside chat by musician Ken Casey, frontman of the Dropkick Murphys and a UMass Boston alum.
“This is trippy, by the way,” Casey said, leaning back on a black couch in the middle of the stage. “Between the House of Blues and the Avalon, which was here before… [I’ve played] probably 100 shows, and I never walked out and sat down.”
To watch recordings of the event, visit the Boston Globe Events YouTube Channel.
To learn more about environmental research at UMass Boston, read the Globe Summit magazine’s article.