A year of celebrating 25 years of student-led education, 20 years as joint Uppsala University and SLU centre, 15 years of transdisciplinary research and research education
Join us in celebrating CEMUS and all the people that made it happen – discussing the past, present and future issues of environment, development and sustainability.
As part of the jubilee, we are publishing a story each week throughout this year. The series include short stories contributed by present and former staff, students, work group members, and other CEMUS friends.
The format and style is open – it can be short articles, novels, poems, memories, funny anecdotes. It can be a look-back at past times, a reflection of the contemporary or a prediction of the future. It can be text, videos, or art. Together we aim to cover a wide range of narratives, perspectives and personalities that somehow are all connected to CEMUS, and paint the history and future of CEMUS and the world. Enjoy!
Editor / Contact (2017): Sachiko Ishihara
week 51 #1
CEMUS: A catastrophe for the university.
Jesse Schrage
Course Coordinator at CEMUS
Yes, you’ve heard me. A real catastrophe. Yes, I am talking about CEMUS. That dark corner of the university. That place where students (students!), with doubtful motives and untrained hands, are set to indoctrinate young aspiring learners into self-motivated St Francis-style veganistas. And they have done it for a quarter of a century already! The point I want to make is this: CEMUS is a catastrophe. A catastrophe for the learners, for the people working with the courses, and for the university as a whole. Here is why.
week 49 #3
A Small Slice
Morag Ramsey
Doctoral student at the Department of History of Sciences and Ideas, Uppsala University, and is a former Course Coordinator at CEMUS.
When Sachiko asked if I wanted to contribute to the diary series I thought: “what a neat way to reflect about CEMUS and how nice of Sachiko to think of me. Of course I should contribute!”
That was in August. It is now December and I am bashfully writing a diary entry on the Monday of the week I am supposed to contribute something. I have read through the other entries and there are many insights already: it really is an interesting project. Considering my current state (scrambling to write something the week of) and the aims of this series, I thought I would reflect about how working at CEMUS helped to convince me I could manage a PhD (and I think managing means being a bit behind every once in a while.)
week 49 #2
CEMUS: an island of thought, visions, and actions.
Alejandro Marcos Valls
Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Former course coordinator at CEMUS.
A title. I was looking for a title to get inspiration to write that piece for the CEMUS Diaries and a lot of ideas came to my mind… Should I write about ‘The grey area’ that CEMUS offers in so many different ways and that allows learning to happen? Should I talk about ‘The CEMUS bubble’ that a lot of people has experienced (and will experience) once you get to know what happens in such a special place? Should I write ‘A letter to myself 25 years ago’ reflecting on how the World and my life have changed in the last 25 years? Should I reflect on ‘In(ter)Dependence’, connected to the Catalan situation? There were so many topics that came to my mind, but, what is CEMUS that allows me to connect such a variety of topics?
week 49 #1
Visits to CEMUS 2015-2017: What the Finns have learned from the Swedes
Riina Koivuranta & Janina Käyhkö
Riina and Janina were both course-coordinators in 2015 and 2016 for Sustainable Development in Education-courses at the University of Helsinki, and are devoted to mentoring and developing the course in the future!
As a part of the Nordic ActSHEN – Action for Sustainability in Higher Education -project, a pilot course in the University of Helsinki under the name of Sustainable Development in Education was launched in 2015. The idea was to study how student-led sustainability education could work in a Finnish university. Visits to and discussions with CEMUS had a strong influence on how the course got established.
week 48
CEMUS 25 YEARS: “To Save the World”
Hans Liljenström
Biophysicist, Professor at the Dept. of Energy and Technology, SLU; director of Agora for Biosystems; former chairman of CEMUS Board; teaching courses in systems analysis
I still remember very strongly the day 15 years ago when Bengt Gustafsson asked me if I would be interested in taking over as a chairman of the CEMUS Board, which he had been chairing since CEMUS started. I had recently got my position as a professor at SLU and was rather new in Uppsala, coming from KTH and Stockholm, and had not heard much about CEMUS. However, I had known Bengt for many years, so I took his question seriously and started to learn more about this center.
week 47
Master Programme in Sustainable Development
Patrik Rönnbäck
Professor in Sustainable development with focus on Natural Resources, Programme head Master in Sustainable development, Uppsala University
If you follow the CEMUS diaries, then you are obviously interested in sustainable development (SD). But how do we assess the general interest and commitment to SD among people? What is the momentum of SD and how does future leaders, i.e., young people position themselves? From the perspective as program head for the master in Sustainable Development (MSD), it is evident that the interest in and momentum for SD is increasing. The program enrols 60 students per year and in 2017 around 1200 students applied to the program, making MSD one of the most popular master programs in Sweden. The application rates have increased by more than 30% annually the last couples of years, illustrating the momentum for SD in terms of the interest from future leaders.
week 46
Three seasons with CEMUS
Dougald Hine
Co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. A regular guest lecturer at CEMUS since 2014.
It’s early spring. I’m taking a language course for immigrants with a higher education. Eight years is the average time it takes before an immigrant to Sweden gets to work in a job that matches their professional qualifications: this course was created to shorten that time. I am not the person the course is aimed at, but I graduated from the basic Swedish for Immigrants programme two months ago and my classmate Sepi told me about this, so here we are. Here we are in Uppsala – because, as part of the course, we’re on a half-day outing by bus from Västerås to sit in one of the lecture theatres in Blåsenhus and be taught about Swedish history and culture. At the break, the lecturer is having an animated discussion with some of the other students. It seems they are arguing about climate change. I don’t know how it started, but as I wander over, I hear him explaining insistently that climate change is not a catastrophic threat and anyone who tells you it is – whether they are a scientist or anything else – is saying this because they are making money out of it. Even if I wasn’t angry, I’d have struggled to hold my end of an argument in Swedish, and I am angry.
week 44 #2
Living on the Edge
Maxim Vlasov
Doctoral student at Umeå School of Business and Economics, former student at CEMUS
All of us live in our own bubbles. CEMUS was a very important bubble for me, for which I am sincerely grateful. It is not easy to be interested in sustainability; even harder to work with it. During my MSc studies in Environmental Management at SLU, I realized quite early that the spectrum of views regarding social-ecological challenges (and solutions to these challenges) was very broad. And yet, the optimism of business greening and technology occupied much space in books, media or conferences I visited. It was at CEMUS – with its courses, project cafés and corridor chats, that I had an environment that tolerated a more critical discussion. The discussion about unsustainable values in today’s globalized, fast-paced societies, which was simply uncomfortable in many other occasions.
week 44 #1
Malin Östman
Course Coordinator and Deputy Director CEMUS
Sound
That of an institution when
You are alone with it
The Interconnectedness of Earth
week 43
Jackie Roth
Undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, former CEMUS student. After she graduates, she will bike from Texas to Alaska to teach North American communities about cancer prevention.
For the entirety of my sentient life, I have always been fascinated by the apparent interconnectedness of the universe. Within every field of study are elements of another; you cannot study medicine without empathy and subjectivity; you cannot study atmospheric science without examining the oceans and marine life; and you cannot study the most grandiose intergalactic phenomena without first understanding the behavior of subatomic particles.
Beyond the CRAP.
week 42
Per Andersson
Sustainability geek and entrepreneur, former Course Coordinator at CEMUS
Time flies and it´s now 2 years since I worked as a course coordinator at CEMUS. Since then I have worked as an independent consultant in the field of Sustainable Development with a wide range of Projects behind us by now. The team that I work with all come from a background at CEMUS as students and/or coordinators. Together we created projects as Cleantech Challenge, Biketown and Sustainability hackathon, all with the aim to contribute to more sustainable and innovative society. And if it´s one thing that I have taken with me from CEMUS, it´s that if you want to make a change you need to get shit done!
‘What problems do you want to solve? Lessons learned at CEMUS can be applied anywhere!’
week 41
Jonathan Nylander
CTO of Creatica Lab 酷课创意教育 (Spring 2015 CEMUS student, part of the UU delegation to COP21)
There are a whole lot of people out there who think our education systems are outdated. Are you perhaps one of them? If we look at how the majority of these systems function, American, Chinese or British, it is clear that the de facto purpose of the education is to perform well on a certain test or examination. Have you ever reflected on the fact that the examination hall is the only place, with exception for grandma’s cabin and airplanes, where teenagers today do not have Internet access?
Kindred spirits and radical imaginations
week 40
Doreen Stabinsky
Professor of Global Environmental Politics at the College of the Atlantic and first holder of the Zennström Visiting Professorship in Climate Change Leadership at CEMUS
It was in a hotel lobby in Doha, Qatar, when I first heard about CEMUS. I was meeting with Niclas Hallström. He wanted to know more about the college where I taught—College of the Atlantic (COA), in Bar Harbor, Maine. He said it reminded him a lot of CEMUS and told me I needed to visit there sometime. He handed me a book (Niclas is always giving out books) called transcending boundaries: how CEMUS is changing how we teach, meet and learn. We were in Doha for the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
How will the world look like in year 2100?
week 39
Helene Albinus Søgaard
Former CEMUS and Master’s student in Sustainable Development, Project Manager in Technology and Environmental Management at the City of Copenhagen
How will the world look like in year 2100? It is not that far away – human beings born today can still be living at that time. It is the time of our children and granchildren. Will we as human race have avoided the ever-escalating ecological crises facing our civilization today?: the resource crisis, the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity worldwide and the loss of top soil, the required ingredient for our food production? What world will we leave our children? The challenges are grave. Already people around the globe have experienced and experience the growing consequences of droughts, floods, hurricans and crop failures. They know hardship and how it leads to conflicts. With an increasing interest in these questions and a rising fear for the future I chose to study at CEMUS.
Creating the world we want to live in
week 38
Camila Hubel and Kristina Korčeková
Current and former students in the Master’s programme in Sustainable Development, Co-founders of Väktargatan Food Hub
The idea of a food cooperative, or a food hub as some call it nowadays, is nothing knew. And that goes for Uppsala as well — many have come and gone, and a couple are still around. So why did we decide to start one? What would make us different from those prior to us? What has CEMUS got to do with it?
Turns out Shakespeare got it wrong
week 37
Melanie Rideout
Former student in the Master’s programme in Sustainable Development and former Course Coordinator at CEMUS
To be or not to be, that’s not always the question. To consciously choose, or unconsciously decide – …To have your eyes open or shut, To think critically or follow the status-quo…These are the real questions. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that we really know nothing, or next to nothing in the grand context of things, and that’s OK.
A Big Bang of the Mind
week 36
Timothée Parrique
PhD Researcher at AdaptEconII, Université Blaise Pascal (former Course Coordinator)
No to disciplined, facile research questions and disciplined, facile research answers, No to prestige, ego, and the selfish pursuit of personal interests, No to arguments of authority and to the rhetoric of power, No to ideologies that see the future as singular and alien. No is one thing I’ve learned at CEMUS; no as the initial spark of intellectual existence for it is not “I think therefore, I am”, but “I think NO, therefore I am.”
———————– summer break ———————-
Week 19 – “The CEMUS School – How to navigate chaos?” by Håkan Emilsson
Week 18 – “The Forest Knows Where You Are” by Isak Stoddard
Week 17 – “To re-educate desire” by Jakob Grandin
Week 16 – “A Council of All Beings 1992-2017” by Daniel Mossberg
Week 15 – “CEMUS Taught Me How To Run” by Johan Gärdebo
Week 14 – “Poor Man’s Kingdom” by Olivia Ahltorp
Week 13 – “X is the space” by Sofia Tonetti
Week 12 – “25 years of staying with the trouble” by Alexis Engström & Susanna Barrineau
Week 11 – “Think globally, act locally” by Magnus Josephson
Week 10 – CE”MUSE” by Hannah Sutton
Week 9 – “When talking about climate change…” by Anna Joos Lindberg
Week 7 – “CEMUS – Will you be my valentine?” by Friederike May
Week 6 – “Run from your idols” by David Kronlid
Week 5 – “Dreams that dreamers dream” by Bon V. Logburg
Week 4 – “Finding your way” by Malin Andersson
Week 3 – “Why am I still around?” by Hannes Willner
Week 2 – “What is your dream course?” by Sachiko Ishihara
Week 1 – “2017 we celebrate CEMUS” by Daniel Mossberg
The CEMUS School - How to navigate chaos?
by Håkan Emilsson
Sustainability Consultant at U&WE CEMUS taught me leadership, or was it actually the place that taught me that? For me, CEMUS have been a place where to test things without being to afraid of the consequences, once again. In one sense a coming back to something childlike, at the same time reaching the bottom in questions that few grown-ups dare to really face. Are we but bacteria in a big petri dish? Do we enact a system that is coded to destroy other species and cultures? Where did all this start? What is the root cause to everything we see falling down around us? (biodiversity, some aspects of cultural diversity) Where do I stand in all this, what is my role to play? My relation to CEMUS started when I first attended Human & Nature in 2008. Then it was a breathing hole for me, something distinctly different from my studies in material engineering. One important lecture was with Maria Pia Boethius, who told the story of her life. Young and popular columnist and writer for a Swedish tabloid. But after a decade of fame she started to see through the system. She was not controlled, formally, to write about superficial things. But she had done that because that was what she thought was expected by her, and that was why she had leveled so fast. Power structures are not always visible, they act in the shadows. Media as well as some other powerful institutions have a way of strengthening it’s own “right” believes and values. Some are promoted, while others that might be of the same talent, or even more talented, but lacking desirable values, are held back. This have always made me a little skeptical about the idea that you need to be part of or on top of a big organization to make a big impact. My second semester at CEMUS I attended the greater part of Actor and Strategies for Change (the first year the course was run). During that course we had a lecture by Alan AtKisson about the Amoeba model that became very important for me. Years later, it stopped my endless searching for distant positions of leverage, and instead made me act on sustainability issues from the position I was in then, as a Master student. The basic idea behind the amoeba model is that society could be described as an amoeba, with different parts, some that are constantly testing the limits of the unknown (scientists), some stay close to and well connected to the centre of mass (politicians), some parts are communicating between the central part and the more isolated parts (science communicators), some stand outside and scream to the mass that it should change way (activists). In society there are many different roles, you can’t play them all so you’ll have to figure out what your reasonably good at and then start trying. Do what you think is important, and you’ll develop your strong skills on the way. In the beginning of autumn 2015 I attended an open lecture with Bengt Gustafsson. Bengt is an astrophysician and one of the founders of CEMUS. He talked about the Multiverse, the theory that there are multiple universe, teasing our imagination and made me feel deeply that there are more things at stake than just some different species on Earth. I often think of Earth as a closed system, isolated in space, our home, where there are planetary boundaries and challenges to build collective action to act on contemporary bigger-than-self issues. We have the responsibility to act. But when you transcend space, and realize there are 100-400 billions of stars only in our galaxy, these stars can have none, one or many planets circulating around them. And none of these billions of potential planets have had a mix of nutrients, heat, radiation and elements to even initiate reactions of life. On earth we do not only have these conditions, we have during billions of years been lucky to avoid (more or less) existential collapses leading to a millions of different life forms today. And now we homo sapiens, one specie that call our self the intelligent one, are leading a mass extinction of species that have only happened five times earlier in the Earth history. None of these times it has been one species driving an extinction, but rather geological change or external event like the impact of a meteoroid. The universal perspective swiped my feet away, moved me to tears and somehow became a turning point for my environmental engagement. I was saturated with sustainability as a philosophy, I knew enough. Since then every thing I do with sustainability is a balance between mind and heart, of doing good things, working for positive impact, but at the same time avoiding emotionally falling down in that hole of tears and despair. I think that it was very important to be truly moved by the sustainability dilemma, to become emotionally calibrated to the existential dimensions of sustainability. Everyday work is not about life and death, but it is neither only a work. So far, it feels like CEMUS gave me stamina for a lifetime. Even so, it is nice to come back some times and get a re-fill of young ideas and driving inspiration. That is what the CEMUS model brings to CEMUS: new student with brilliant ideas and eager aspiration to try them. That’s what keeps making CEMUS ever young and actual. Deputy Director and Educational Coordinator at CEMUS The Oak Tree: On a Monday evening in the early fall of 1992, over 200 students gathered in a lecture hall in the Main University Building in Uppsala. They had all signed up and been lucky enough to receive a spot in the first edition of the interdisciplinary course Humanity & Nature [2] at Uppsala University. The course description was not finished in time to make it into the printed course catalogue – and there was of course no internet or digital registration at the time – so a separate flyer had been designed and made available to students that stopped by the registration office. Adriaan Honcoop, a local Uppsala artist, had been commissioned to design a front cover to the flyer, which depicted a woman and a tree, or perhaps more accurately, a tree-woman. Trees have a played a fundamental role in the mythologies and sense-making of human cultures for a very long time. Here in the north, the Sami people spoke of Saiwa Muora – the holy tree, and the Norse had their Ash Yggdrasil – the tree of life. An in the Celtic isles there were the Druids – also known as the Oak-knowers, or Oak-seers. The tree of knowledge of Christianity and Judaism, the Bodhi Tree in Buddhism. Even in contemporary fantasy literature, trees play an important role, often taking on characteristics of humans or other animals – from Tolkien’s Ents and Rowling’s Whomping willow to the The Weirwood in R.R Martin’s A song of Ice and fire. I the late 19th and early 20th century the devastating effects of “modern forestry development” and various forms of industrial logging were becoming more and more apparent, and the fields of forest preservation, conservation and management were born. However, it is not until recently that some scientists and foresters are beginning to rediscover the breathtaking complexity and wonder of the life of trees. In his book The Hidden Life of Trees [3], forester and author Peter Wohlleben draws on recent research as well as his own experiences as a forester, to unveil the extraordinary abilities and sentience of trees. Believe it or not, trees seem to communicate with each other in a myriad of ways, have friends and enemies, they do parenting (often quite strict), take care of the elderly and sick, collaborate closely with other species (such as mushrooms), they breathe, and they even have a form of memory. However, trees often perform these activities in a slow and unhuman kind of way which seems to make it easier for us humans not to notice – or ignore while loudly exclaiming that we must be careful not to anthropomorphize, nor stand in the way of progress, of profit or of sustainability [4]. But at times we are struck by a sense of clarity that is impossible to ignore – even though we might later tend to forget it. A few years back I was hiking down from a peak in western Nepal, and as I came back to the tree-line and was making my way quickly down a steep little path, I literally felt my head being pulled up and to the left. I stopped and found myself face-to-face with a knotted old pine tree. It seemed to be saying: Here I Am. Here. I. Am. I stood transfixed for several minutes, not knowing what to do, before pulling my eyes and head back to the ground and slowly and contemplatively making my way down towards the village. Trees can get old. Really old. And the oldest one of them all is a small Spruce tree known as Old Tjikko in Dalarna, Sweden. Using carbon-dating researchers at Umeå University have estimated its age to a bewildering 9950 years [5]. This is a tree, an individual tree that is almost 11 times older than the oldest Western institution of higher learning [6], around 18 times older than Uppsala University and as much as 400 times older than CEMUS. Universities, like trees, tend to be slow to change and react and there is definitely some sort of analogy to be found between the path-dependency of institutionalized thought (e.g. in the form of academic disciplines) and that of trunks and branches. C.P Snow’s two cultures of the humanities and science [7] might be seen as two great trunks on a tree that decided to go their separate ways, and then splitting again, and again, and again – further and further down reductionism road. But then, as all metaphors, it probably should be abandoned and recognized for what it is – a metaphor. How are new fields and disciplines born? How is the university renewed? These are question that probably are better answered in other ways. But what about CEMUS? Is a tree (or tree-woman) still a fitting image for what CEMUS has been over the past 25 years, and hopefully continue to be in the future? Well, I think so. Whatever CEMUS is, it was what stopped me in my tracks, spin me around and around, until I came to stand still, at least for a moment, and realize I wasn’t lost after all: “Stand still. No two trees are the same to Raven. Note and references: PhD Candidate at SpaceLab, University of Bergen and Educational Coordinator Emeritus at CEMUS(1) teach desire to desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above all to desire in a different way [2] And so we came here – to the point where our primary means to make sense of a messy present is through the futures we anticipate. Futures extrapolated, calculated, approximated, forecasted, backcasted, modelled, and dreamt. Futures brought to life in the present in visions, scenarios, hallucinations, performances, and as the measurable goals and targets in all those PDF-documents that govern humanity’s universalist aspirations.[3] Futures only occasionally truly desired, longed for; for the most part naïve dreams and equally naïve nightmares, eroded by accelerated change and suffocated by diminishing carbon budgets. Once-viable futures now become obsolete before they have had time to pass through peer-review: a mass-extinction of dreams and possible worlds for those of us who were somewhat recently born. If we are ever to mobilize and materialize alternative futures that matter it is, in other words, crucial that we learn to desire more, better, differently – and faster. Narratives of unavoidable futures are often deployed to control and constrain the present, but the future may also be a creative and emancipatory domain. The “radical imagination” transforms the future into a space “to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be” and then “bringing those possible futures ‘back’ to work on the present, to inspire action … today”.[4] But such efforts are often frustrated by our “incapacity to think outside the here and now”.[5] Our aptitude for foresight is limited by values, worldviews, paradigms, and a sheer lack of words.[6] Time and again, our collective anticipatory efforts converge on the two well-worn, but largely unproductive, narrative paths of either a status quo thinly iced with individualized behaviour change and miracle technologies, or – the end of the world. This is the point where we should ask ourselves, as J. K. Gibson-Graham does, how we can create an more-than-academic practice that allows us to “become open to possibility rather than limits on the possible”.[7] CEMUS, I suggest, has cultivated possibility through a practice of pluralism based on participation, dialogue and debate.[8] Pluralism does not imply some form of sloppy “anything goes” relativism where all positions and “alternative facts” are equally valid. In contrast, pluralism-as-practice is a rigorous, disciplined operation, which requires us to “travel some distance beyond [our] own position in order to see reality from another point of view”.[9] Pluralistic practice is, to borrow from Frederic Jameson’s eloquent description of utopian form, a “meditation on radical difference, radical otherness, and on the systemic nature of the social totality”.[10] By cultivating a discipline of examining, interrogating and reframing problems from the position of a range of different conflicting worldviews, aspirations, values and paradigms, and by rereading for difference to identify what is possible, we prepare the ground for “creativity to generate actual possibilities where none formerly existed”.[11]
In this, we can turn the broad and contested nature of sustainable development into a creative resource.[12] CEMUS is where political ecology meets resilience meets the self-help styled management platitudes from Harvard Business Review. We manage-our-energy-not-our-time as we turn green to gold, talk about the mountain, partake in a necessary revolution and review the latest ecological theory of unequal exchange. We close our eyes, get some damp soil and partly decomposed leaves in our cupped hands, breathe, we are not completely at ease when we – eyes still closed – walk in circles and bounce into each other while someone chants improvised poetry but that’s probably the point; we open our eyes and examine tax policy, the circular economy, and the merits of carbon capture and storage. We are the air aware, the engineers, the warriors, the alchemists; we are the diplomats with frequent flyer cards, the transition-preppers with local-resilient-life-boat-communities; we have blood on our hands and dirt under our fingernails; we are the shamans, the entrepreneurs, the feminist mansplainers; we are global citizens walking on the iron bridges of Uppsala. We get excited about A+++ fantastic washing machines and cheap red wine; we are always ready to make the business case for sustainability as a driver of innovation, to discuss the finer points of Schumpeterian underdevelopment and degrowth; we know how to find our way through almost any ecomodernist maze-in-the-air. We go to Norway each spring to kneel humbly before the flower at the tree line. We are the structures and the agencies; we are modern, pre-modern, mostly post-modern. As we swirl and curl through this storm of desire, no one knows precisely where we will end up. What we are striving for is to make use all these divergent points of departure to critically examine the present and extend the range of conceivable futures. By “engaging with other ideas, with the multiplicity of ideas, we enter new spaces of possibility, spaces which were previously outside the realms of our imagination”.[13] Our aim is nothing less than to expand the space of the possible. Such a practice of pluralism will not happen by itself, but requires structure, careful planning and facilitation. As Jeppe Læssøe asserts, participatory education is often nothing more than a “self-deceptive simulation” that serves to reinforce (instead of contesting) the discourses and values that are already dominant in society. To work, pluralism-as-practice therefore calls for a participation of a certain kind, a disciplined dialogue that brings up dilemmas, dissent and deliberation.[14]
I’ll be the first to admit how good it feels when a common understanding about messy social-environmental relationships starts to emerge in a group, when we get a language that we share so that we can reach each other.[15] In all courses there might be pockets of consensus, even a convergence of values and objectives of sorts from which change can be mobilized. But synthesis and redemption is not what we are here for: what we seek is dissonance, disagreement, disruption, trouble.[16] If we ever are to open up the future and the choices ahead for deliberation, that will be “predicated on not just the recognition but the positive encouragement of difference”.[17] We want countless ideas, visions and ontologies to clash all around us, and as we rise from the ashes it is imperative that we also dare to take our own normative standpoints, that we do not forget to desire. For all I know that was why we came here in the first place: to re-educate desire. To desire (an academic practice that is kind of meaningful and fun). To desire more (there is more to life than a cheaper cup of coffee, we can always fight for that). To desire better (a more-than-human society; philosophy as a way of life where we practice radical solidarity through all our incompleteness and potential). To desire faster (before our dreams – and lives – dissipate). And above all to desire in a different way. Notes and references Director of Studies CEMUS Idre, April 17 “Beech, Oak, Chestnut, Ash. Good, good, good. Many have come. Now we must decide if the Ents will go to war.” The world is alive. This is not a subject-object divided world. The search for intelligent life in the universe should really begin here, on planet Earth. Tree, fish, rock, mountain, river, ice on water, ice on land, cloud, sky, stars, flower, human, more-than-human. Can you hear them? The dead and dying? The living? See the destruction? Beauty? Smell the oil burning? Early spring magnolia white? What would they say of CEMUS efforts to save the world over these last 25 years? How we have failed, and how we hopefully in some way have succeeded. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (not including other greenhouse gases) were at 357.86 ppm 1992, the year CEMUS started its first course Man and Nature (Människan och naturen). 25 years later levels have reached 410.28 ppm (April 18, 2017). Numbers are abstract and most of you reading this might not be natural scientists trained in atmospheric gases, but this change over 25 years is staggering. Remember Bill McKibben’s 350.org? 350 ppm as a target for what is possibly a safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Less humans live in extreme poverty 2017 than 1992 (www.gapminder.org). The number of US dollar billionaires were 233 in 1992, now in 2017 the number has climbed to 2 043 (www.forbes.com). There were 115 conflicts in the world in 1992, 142 in 2015, with non-state conflicts almost doubling (http://ucdp.uu.se/). More cars, hospitals, computers, universities, more things and building and roads and power plants. Less sea ice, less land ice, less species, less free-flowing rivers, less old-growth forests, less animals, plants, mountains – more industrial human. But what would they say? The more-than-human. And why haven’t they fought back against industrial civilisation and its expansion? Or maybe that’s what they are doing, playing the long game, fighting back and at the same time waiting for signs of weaknesses in human determination and infrastructure. Waiting and joining up with allies, such as the many students and other people that have passed through CEMUS during 25 years. We’re in this fight together, fighting for a beautiful world full of life, companionship, fun, meaningful relationships, love and passion. Hopefully our failures can be mitigated and lived with, at best our successes will wait for us in a distant future, and maybe CEMUS have saved some small, small part of the world. But what would they say? The more-than-human. One voice, for all of Earth, might say: “The crucified planet Earth, should it find a voice and a sense of irony, might now well say of our abuse of it, “Forgive them, Father, They know not what they do.” The irony would be that we know what we are doing. When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, ”It is done.” People did not like it here.” Another might say: “They had voices of their own. Saruman. A wizard should know better! There is no curse in Elvish, Entish or the tongues of men for this treachery! My business is with Isengard tonight. With rock and stone. […] Rárum-rum! Come my friends. The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents.” Former Course Coordinator and PhD Candidate at the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory In 2009 me and my daughter were on our way to the climate meeting COP15 in Copenhagen. Everything was at stake, it was now or never. And I was afraid to bring her across the Öresund bridge: Police violence on the news; stories told by my friends of what happened. We all left COP15 running, some by feet and others by flight. I ran from 2009 and my daughter was left with the future. The violence has continued and it is a slow violence.(1) With a combination of overgrowth and under-nourishing species go extinct and climates change. But the violence against oneself is the most dangerous. When I cannot understand, explain or change it becomes hard to feel at all. That violence you can never run from. When my friends, activists and politicians, ask for change very little has changed in their message: “How do we solve this problem?” Generations are kept hostage; grown-ups anticipating solutions and children anticipated to be the solution. Is it coming soon, the climate change? For some it is already here. It has been a slow narrative, ancient long before Copenhagen.(2) And the threats will remain long after the COP-meetings. I do not wish to solve environmental problems, I want to live them. I want to say to my daughter that I have lived the change and that the slow violence against ourselves finally is over. I want to feel my stride rip up the ground beneath me. It is not for climate meetings, politicians, or manifestations by activists that I am running. I am running for my life.* A student on a similar path to mine once said that all students come to CEMUS with different ideas but leave with similar ones. The similarity, I believe, is that one learns a language for expressing feelings and thoughts about a world of environmental fragility. The language taught us to speak of things dying and to listen for ways of living, still, in that world. It is a language we share but that can be spoken using many individual variations of words and movements. CEMUS is part of that movement because its students keep it in motion, always learning. Together we have learned how to run. Run for our lives. —————— * This text is based on a contribution to Run For Your Life (3). (1) Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011). Former Student and Course Coordinator at CEMUS My interaction with CEMUS has in many ways being a series of life changing experiences. I will always remember my first semester of studying sustainable development; it was like being hit in the head by a well-hidden, scary and inconvenient truth. It hurt a little, yes. But more than that, it opened my eyes to see a world of amazing people, fighting for what they believe in. I instantly knew that in some way, I wanted to join. At some point during this semester, our course coordinators gave us the most exciting assignment I had ever had. We were to express something about sustainable development in art! Another life changing event for me to realize that, to find sustainability, no one should be forced to choose between creativity and ”serious stuff”. Instead, we should encourage each other to always combine the two. At the time for this assignment, the Green Revolution had recently become a symbol of evil to me. A symbol of climate change, hunger, poverty, capitalism, inequality and the disgusting power play of ’the western world’. The Green Revolution, known and awarded to have ended the world hunger… Well hidden is the truth about all those peasants who lost their ability to provide for there families, lost their lands, lost their honor, and lost their lives when committing suicide. I embraced the opportunity to express my frustration and anger in art. And that’s how Poor Man’s Kingdom came into being. The big world – a world of climate change, political turbulence, inequality, violence, environmental damage and dysfunctional globalism – is a place where you’re engagement and will to fight is needed desperately. But it is a place where you can easily be consumed by dark tidings and disasters, loose your spirit, wellbeing and joy of life. The small world – a world of creativity, friendship, love and joy – is a place where your actions may or may not make a difference. Where your stories may or may not be remembered. But it is a place where it is essential for you to spend time, in order to keep well, enjoy life and see the beautiful things in this world. A wise old man, a lecturer at CEMUS, once explained this to me and emphasized the importance of spending at least as much time in the small world as in the big world. Now, to all of you who have recently or a very long time ago, been hit in the head… Keep up the good fight, but try not to loose yourselves in that scary and inconvenient truth. Thank you CEMUS for helping me finding the way I want to live my life – professionally as well as personally. I feel certain that without your guidance, I would not be as knowing, as worried, as caring and as happy as I am today. Former Course Coordinator at CEMUS X is for the people that haven’t been heard, those who speak Dari, Mandarin, Persian, Swahili, Spanish, Serbian, Swedish. For Valentina that never could make it into this university because she doesn’t speak
that language, even though she speaks the third most spoken language in the world. For those who couldn’t or weren’t encourage to enter the world of education but teaches things anyway. For those who didn’t learn to read or write but manage to communicate important insights. X is for the visionary ones with a million wonderful ideas that never were discovered. For him that never became that scientist or pianist. For those who write books signed with others names. X is for those who had to make hard decisions. For Antonia, whom I had the chance to be for a week at the web page enotroszapatos.org, where you live the life as someone else. Leave my family to go and study at a university far away in Bogotá or stay at home and become a community leader. For those that not even make it into the books of the Global environmental history course – a course that aims more at looking at the angels of the history. X is for my grandfather who begged his neighbours for money to go and study at the university to become an engineer. Who later wrote books about steel. Superman, steel man my grandfather. X is the space. How can we make space for difference in a world screaming for words spelled in one way? Education for her to educate others so that they can educate her. Welcome to the world of possibilities! Sadly, you didn’t have that key. But one hole in the net, some silver coins, an ace of hearts and you slipped thorough the space. I couldn’t be more shocked or speechless. Project Assistants at the Active Student Participation (ASP) project, Uppsala University Did you know that there is no potential for learning without dissonance? That it’s only in times of pedagogical crisis that we can shift our frames of understanding? These are statements more and more commonly expressed by researchers – and while we don’t necessarily (dis)agree we still ask ourselves: What would make anyone believe this to be true? It is, we assume, a very specific form of learning that they are talking about. Two things: First, there is no consensus on how learning happens or how it happens best. Second, we find ourselves in the mess which we call climate change, and in order to prepare current and future generations to deal with climate change, some educational institutions are working with education for sustainable development, a term that is equally contentious and used to various ends, some for better and others for worse. CEMUS’s conspicuous usage of ‘sustainable development’ in all of its courses can make one wonder, what is actually different here? Is CEMUS free from institutional constructions of the term that result in nothing except for ‘business as usual’? Hardly. We may never know exactly what all the students, coordinators, professors, researchers, and so on, take with them from CEMUS education and CEMUS is part of a very old, traditional university structure. Yet, CEMUS invites translation. It invites agency and creates conditions to “re-learn [ways] of teaching and learning” (Wals and Jickling 2002, p.228). In a way, it further invites learners to “re-gain the agency we need to move towards the crisis rather than away from it” (Houwer 2011, p.111). The sometimes abrupt realization that your courses are actually being led by students and not professors of sustainable development is the first clue that, as a place where old traditions may not have such a stronghold, CEMUS education offers opportunities for different translations of sustainable development. The moment the “sage on the stage” disappears and students are invited to plan and lead courses is the moment where the idea that someone is going to tell you what it means to be “sustainable” vanishes and the moment where uncertainty, and where crisis may emerge. But how can crisis in the classroom possibly be constructive? Houwer argues that, “Crises, when accessed, defamiliarize normative frames of reference and reveal the structural, historical and political roots of the situation…[and] produce a potentially pedagogical cognitive dissonance” (2011, p.112). Students that learn in and through crises do not return to their pre-crisis framings, but instead re-frame and make the world anew. In this process, the learner cannot merely feel the crisis, but must also act and reflect in order for it to be transformative. This involves becoming a subject (as opposed to a passive object) and choosing to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway 2014). “The urgent task for schools is not to respond to ‘the climate crisis.’ Rather, the task is to learn how to learn with and through any public crisis” (Houwer 2011, p.115). In that sense, the university needs to return to big questions; it must engage in public crises and engage in the translation of what it means to be a learner in this age of climate change. So thank you CEMUS, for your pedagogical crisis and for all your trouble. We hope we can stay with it. References Houwer, R. (2011) Learning Freedom: The pedagogical potential of crisis. Journal for Activism in Science & Technology Education, 3(1), 109-117. Wals, A. & Jickling, B. (2002) “Sustainability” in higher education: From doublethink and newspeak to critical thinking and meaningful learning. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 3(3), 221-232. Former course coordinator for the Life Philosophy course I heard it over and over again. Think globally, act locally. But I never really got it. Or perhaps I didn’t listen. It sounded like nice words. In a big scary world. Now I see the world shrinking. At my doorstep. In my office. I meet refugees, asylum seekers, families, babies, musicians, football players, dreamers. I talk to them, but mostly I listen. And the stories are beautiful and gruesome at the same time. Like the boy, who at 16 years of age fled through the Sahara desert. He had one bottle of water to keep him from drying out. At one point, a guy in the same group asked him for water. The boy with the water made a quick judgement, realised that his own chance of surviving dramatically decreased if he gave it away. So he kept it to himself, and survived. The other guy died. Or another time, when a woman started crying when I asked her how she was doing. After a few seconds she told me that they were tears of joy. A man had never asked her how she was doing before. In her world, that was rational, the way things worked. “The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.” ― Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust The modern world, that I grew up in, gave me boxes and boundaries. It also gave me the privilege of never having to deal with such a dilemma as the boy in the desert faced. But every time I meet someone who comes from a different world than mine, on the other side of all the boundaries. With different boxes. Every time this meeting occurs, the boundaries are faded out. The boxes are rearranged. My world is rearranged. When the world comes to your door step, it shrinks. Overwhelmed by emotions, it grows smaller. Let it change. Let it challenge you. Let the rationality be challenged. Think globally, act locally, tell stories. And listen to the ones waiting to be told. Exchange student at CEMUS during Fall 2016, part of the UU delegation to COP22 “muse” : to become absorbed in thought; to think about something carefully and thoroughly; a state of deep thought or dreamy abstraction. Today, all the scientific evidence is telling us that we cannot afford to delay the reckoning with climate change. With each passing day, the case grows more compelling and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or common sense should be willing to contemplate. Studying Sustainability puts an interdisciplinary perspective on the world, its’ finite resources and of our human impacts. The world has learnt to judge success and prosperity by a monetary figure often gained by the exploitation of fellow humans, or our environment. But we need to rethink this. And this is what CEMUS inspires us to do. “Muse”: To meditate. To ponder. To ruminate. To consider or examine attentively or deliberately. To think about something carefully or thoroughly. CEMUS is a quest to find answers. The big questions that loom over us relating to climate change, environment, energy, poverty, economic development, power structures and more that are forever debated with never a concrete solution. It is a response to the ‘too-hard-basket’ excuse, pardoning those in power for overseeing the hurdles of our time. It is group of impassioned people motivated to tackle the impending problems of the world, which can too often be overseen or brushed aside. It is a response to the top down usual teaching methods. It appreciates everyone’s diverse background, insights and inspirations in their own ways. It is about transcending boundaries, pursuing individual initiatives and defining our own questions. CEMUS calls for collaboration. In this individualistic world we live in, it is a refreshing touch. And this is what happens when thousands of minds come together. It is a collective identity. It is a network of like-minded people. It is that feeling of acceptance. A feeling that you have found what you were looking for. CEMUS is about becoming a someone and not a something. Someone who challenges the most habitual trains of thought, who can take an external perspective and who has developed their own voice and morals. Not a something that has emerged from a professionalization process without an interdisciplinary perspective. It is a “meeting place.” It is a magnet for all those individuals who seek a sense of community, inspiration and a platform for taking action together. CEMUS does as it preaches. (Even if this means driving for 5 days from Sweden to Morocco with 9 people in a minivan trying to avoid flying in order to minimise our CO2 footprint). It is so much more than Pass / Fail. It is long nights in the CEMUS library, a full schedule with activist groups, gardening days, petitioning, sign making, dumpster diving, documentary screening etc etc shenanigans. It inspires those not only who sit within the classrooms, it permeates far beyond the university walls. A butterfly effect creating ripples. It is a blur of accents from every corner of the globe, a buzzing mind full of never ending questions seeking answers. It is a collective of cynics, social reformers, activists, optimists and engaged compassionate human beings. It is not static, but ever changing with the contributions of each group of students and teachers who help it to evolve. CEMUS is our home away from home. CEMUS is our muse. So happy birthday CEMUS. 25 years of inspiring students and co-habitants on this finite and ever evolving planet. Though you look not a day older, you are more the wiser. “Environmental education must be an exercise in applied hope that equips young people with the skills, aptitudes, analytical wherewithal, creativity and stamina to dream, act and lead heroically. To be effective on a significant scale, however, the creative energy of the rising generations must be joined with strong and bold institutional leadership to catalyse a future better than the one in prospect.” David Orr* *Orr, “What is Higher Education Now?” The State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability, London, Earthscan, 2009, p.82. Course Coordinator at CEMUS “In The Age of Stupid, Fanny Armstrong’s speculative documentary of a So. On the one hand, there is the version of reality derived through logical reasoning based on scientific evidence revealing global ecological devastation. On the other, there is the intuitive emotional response set off from the threat of losing something you love. Outcome: visualizations of the future getting blurred by a screen of logic and ultimately, disabling some from caring at all. But what then? Call on the same emotional response which resonated with Trump supporters? Or is that different? How is it different? Paradoxical necessities in liminal spaces etc. Anecdote. It is a difficult task, being human – a lifetime project. Bashing our funny looking tentacles at various items, animals, plants and each other we come to realizations such as that there is dead, living, big, small, edible, sentient stuff, lots of green stuff, stuff that hurt, stuff that feels good and finally, that in a peculiar dance of interrelatedness all these entities form a One. For some that last little bit can be tremendously hard to fully comprehend. As a very very random example of someone who has yet to explore the vast mysteries of the universe, take Trump. He formulated his stance towards climate change as follows, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Who knows what this all means? I’m no expert. __________________________________________________ I’m just as confused as you are. __________________________________________________ To put an end to this jibber-jabber, I invite reconciliation between all of us, earthly creatures, by subscribing to the acclaimed brilliance of that one guy – Albert Einstein, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Rest assured as we are all equal in our capacity to be stupid, insufficient. Trump as well as climate activists. Hold on. Being offered a limited vision is for some better than the alternative of having no vision at all, as ugly as it might be. People need something to believe in. A compass, a frame – a relatable story. The current blockbuster: “us” versus “them”. Don’t wait, buy it now! As stupid as we are What’s the deal? Let us steal The gluttony of words, dressing them in a deceptive haze Good luck with that, you stay there guys Course Coordinators at CEMUS Person X (experienced course coordinator, works at CEMUS already 3 years) Newbie #1 (just started at CEMUS, crazy activist) Person X: Hej guys, how is the course going? Newbie #1: Yes, let’s show it, but we need some theory as well. ✵ ✵ FIN ✵ ✵ -Huge thank you to all the amazing individuals at CEMUS who have made our time here unforgettable, and hoping for many more wonderful memories to come!- Course Coordinator at CEMUS Welcome to the week of commercial manifestations of this thing called love. Here’s my contribution. When I was 5 years old I met my future husband. Kidding. When I was 5 years old, the first student-led course was run at CEMUS. About 20 years later we ran into each other. And while I’m sure neither of us expected it to happen, but we fell in love instantly. There were flowers, fireworks, rainbows and unicorns and all that jazz. It was magic. And we’ve been on cloud cloud nine* for almost four years now. #blessed So I wanted to take this truly magnificent moment in time and do something special for CEMUS, to show…it (him? her?) just how much I care about…it. As a result, you, and all the rest of the world (with internet access) will now have the opportunity to read the first ever co-created CEMUS love poem. Essentially I gave all my colleagues minimum instructions to help me out with this. They were: Send me 1-2 poetic lines on the subject of ‘CEMUS love’. While this overwhelmed some/most I managed to bully many of them into submitting something anyway. And then I just put it together. Easy. It’s a bit like doing research really. You integrate what people have said into something new, ideally coherent and include a little bit of your own spice to make it great. The parallels are undeniable, really. Now without further ado, sit down, hold your horses, buckle up and hide your children, here it comes: (takes deep breath, relaxes) The moonlight outlines the tree silhouettes I can see the stars through my window, and the moon is bright. We are all lichen. How I used to be and who I am, My heavy heart aches for thee like one of Rockström’s theories Here runs the paternoster of hope A place to meet, a place to talk, Sweaty armpits and ill-fitting clothes. It’s a place to learn to live to learn, Where wisdom and innovation blend to reshape novel futures A vortex of the best kind. Head spinning, mind stretching, soul is dancing along. And even when you are far, From a silent spring to flower power Even if a wolf’s howl from the lecture hall is all, Roses are red, violets are blue, PS: To hate the grey zones or to love them – is that our spicy question?! And, in all seriousness: Thank you, CEMUS. To me, you’re not a place or an institution. You’re not a collection of courses or a library and not even a ‘meeting place for transdisciplinary learning’. You are the people that come in and shape you, just as they shape me. Students, course coordinators and the random others – when I am old and grey and full of sleep** you are what I will remember, because with you I learned, laughed and lived. Without you, I would not be me. And without you, my life would feel like a life less extraordinary. Many thanks for their contributions go to (in reversed alphabetical order, because why not): Hannes Willner, Isak Stoddard, Mel Rideout, Lisa Plattner, Daniel Mossberg, Alejandro Marcos Valls, Anna Joos Lindberg, Sachiko Ishihara, Alexis Engström, Dani Ceder, Isabel Baudish, Sanna Barrineau, Malin Andersson, Lakin Anderson, Kevin Anderson (no known relation to the former). *Fun fact: In German it’s ‚cloud seven’. Not sure what this means, but I’m sure you could run a societal discourse analysis based on it. **I did not write this line. William Butler Yeats did („When you are old“, 1892). Senior lecturer at Department of Education, Coordinator at SWEDESD It’s not that I like riots and yes, the African students are anything but prudent, in fact some will call them political pollutants at least if you are asking the cops that will shoot’em you can see both sides running to catch up with their idols – almost bridal – and the cops don’t need informed consent and I wonder who is bent and meant to be a gent with all this violence and shut-up-and-be-silent and the kids won’t back down cause this is their showdown maybe this is our meltdown and a time for all of us who are close enough to drop the fluff and be strident So the climate is fucked-up, although some like to present-it-like-its-brushed-up like a photo-shopped image of madness, yet the climate is sadness and I know that you know that they know what we know to be a true story that there’s no death with glory the truth it’s just gory and speaking of madness what’s up with progress let’s take a quick-guess that the so-called noblesse that really should confess that they fucked-up the process while they still harness…economy – they’re riding a bigotry-horse straight-in-to-the-furnace And this that I´m writing it is not that I’m fighting but you know that I might’ve been if I was not living a life of not giving what is this sea that I am swimming in tears of the young ones who are posing as strong ones, our daughters and sons who are joining with ISIS are paying the prices of ignorant teaching and fun-da-men-ta-list preaching, no not by the priest and not by the beast cause the priest is a beast and the beast is a priest no by mummy and daddy and good old slim shady and sister and brother and no-one will bother until that-one, the Other, is crashing our feast So, I’m in my kitchen, the-kitchen-I’m-rich-in writing this poem though I’m no Leonard Cohen and God no LKJ although I like the dub at home or at the club any day, but does that mean that I’m less than authentic, I’m just sick of the frantic fighting for what? as a teacher of college and the books that I cook they all look like this verse u know gobbledygook when you are antic. So, I am leaving you now, this line is the final, but the final might be tidal if you idle so let’s beat suicidal and run full steam ahead; but away from your idols. Poet in residence Course coordinator at CEMUS I remember when I got the job at CEMUS, I had finished my Bachelor’s program a couple of months earlier and had been looking for a job without much success. Many jobs did not seem interesting, and the ones that did required years of experience. I felt lost. I wanted to do something that mattered. Then I saw that CEMUS where looking for course coordinators and after having taking courses there myself, I was very interested. Though, I remember that I was very nervous. “Why would they hire me?” and “I’m not qualified to do this” were thoughts that ran through my head. However, after talking to friends and family, telling me that I should definitely take the chance, I finally sent in my application, and to my great joy I got the position. I was so happy! I really felt that now I had a job where I could make a real difference. Where I could be a part of making the world a better place. Where I could inspire people. And I still feel the same way today. I really believe that the education we offer at CEMUS can change people, can help them find their way in the labyrinth of sustainable development. * * * * * * Because it is often difficult to find the way in the myriad of definitions and solutions when it comes to sustainable development. What is one to do? Hopefully, here at CEMUS we can offer a way to find your own path. To find the way for you to make the world a better place, and help you find the courage to follow it. Because one person can’t do everything, but everyone can do something, and together we can make a change. I believe that change starts within you, if you can find what matters most to you, if you can find your strengths and weaknesses, if you can find your path. Both studying at CEMUS and working here makes you realize that sustainable development is not easy. Sometimes you feel lost, or angry, or hopeless. The path might not be easy, it might be filled with obstacles, but when you reach your goal it will all be worth it. * * * * * * Furthermore, at CEMUS, you can hopefully find people who feel the same way. Who are also worried about the state our world is in and what will happen in the future. A place where you will see that you are not alone, and that you do not have to do this on your own. A place where you can find your way, and see that it is not a lonely path. A place where you can make a change. I’m glad I had the courage to follow my path, and I believe that CEMUS can help people do the same. “”I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”” J.R.R Tolkien. The Fellowship of the ring Course coordinator at CEMUS My first encounter with the university was in 2008. After graduating from high school and two years of music studies at a Folk high school, I was looking for a way to challenge myself more intellectually. Following my interest in environmental issues, I sent a late application for a course in sustainable development in Uppsala the week before the semester started, called the institution and asked about the chances of getting enrolled with such short notice. Just show up on Monday and we’ll work it out, someone said to me over the phone. That following Monday I took the train to Uppsala and somehow made my way, confused and with a heavy breath, to Geocentrum. I stepped into Hamberg lecture hall half an hour late, gazed around all the foreign faces in the room and sat down in the back-row. It was one of the course coordinators Anders Carlborg holding the introduction lecture for the course Sustainable Development A. I don’t remember exactly what he was talking about, but I remember thinking there and then: This is it. This is exactly what I should be doing right now. I had a very strong feeling that because of how things are now, there is nothing more important to study than the issues about sustainability. Dating almost ten (!) years back, that was the first time I set my foot at CEMUS. After that I came back to take the Sustainable Development B course (HUB) in 2010, took my first shaky steps as a course coordinator for the then brand new Sustainable Design course in 2011, went away for a couple of years, came back to run the Life Philosophy course in 2014 which was followed by coordinating Sustainable Development A (HUA) last year. The course everything started with. Circle closed. * * * I have asked myself lately though, as I have strolled up and down through the charming corridors of Geocentrum: Why am I still around? Is it because of the state of the world? Since I took my first course here things haven’t really improved, rather the opposite. We are standing in front of innumerable challenges of a magnitude and complexity that we have never experienced before. And society keeps telling us that everything is OK. Keep calm and carry on doing whatever. Is it just therapy? A way for me to process feelings of hope and despair. A breathing hole through which I can at least tell myself that I am doing something, with the risk of falling into a false sense of satisfaction of being a do-gooder and hoping that things will work out. (I remember reading Derrick Jensen during one of the courses, writing that hope is the most dangerous thing as it leads to inaction, leaving us apathetical, hoping that somehow things will work out. I didn’t agree at all back then and I’m not sure if I agree completely today either, but I do see the danger of thinking that you are doing something that matters instead of actually doing the things that matter). Maybe it is because of the people? All the fantastic colleagues and fellow students that I have had the privilege to get to know and who have become almost like a second family from time to time. People to share intellectually and morally challenging discussions as well as lunchroom jokes, frustration over administrative obstacles and really bad coffee. Or is it because of what we actually do? A never-ending but intriguing and inspiring search for answers about how we are to respond to these challenges. The thought that another education is possible and maybe, just maybe, through learning and unlearning, we might fix all of this after all? Probably it is a little bit of everything. My new home * * * I am still around, even though I am soon leaving. Slowly detaching myself and moving on to other business. Although, I find it somewhat hard to let go. Maybe it is because, despite all the doubt, I know that what we do and how we do it is in a way pretty unique as well as very, very necessary. That thought is why I have committed to education and am moving on to work as a teacher. I believe that if we are going to have the slightest chance of getting to the roots of all our problems, we need a fundamental shift of how we think about the world and ourselves. This is not something that you achieve through mere information or just more knowledge. It is not even more education that will save us, but education of a certain kind, as David Orr wrote. But what is this certain kind of education then? Personally, I believe we need to learn how to un-learn and re-learn. We often say that we want to create change but we rarely talk about what this change actually entails. Change itself is not inherently good. A lot of things that we see changing today are actually for worse. Sustainability, after all the apolitical save-the-world-jargon has been washed off, is at its core a contested concept and practice. There are a lot of people, companies, governments, organizations that benefit from status quo or the opposite of sustainability and will work hard against it. We are a part of this as well, only through living our everyday lives. That is why we need to learn how to un-learn our preconceived notions about how the world works and re-learn our own role in the ongoing destruction to start with. During my time here at CEMUS and my journey through the realm of education and sustainability, have I succeeded with changing the world? I don’t know. Probably not enough, since a lot of stuff is going south right now. But even so, it has been a great journey because of everything I have learnt myself, all the people I have met, and the opportunities I have had to make some kind of change – no matter how small it may be. This journey continues and it probably never ends, but it is a journey well worth traveling. I believe that is why I am still around. The journey continues… Course coordinator at CEMUS If you could change education, what would you do? These are questions we constantly ask ourselves at CEMUS. We actually have the opportunity to create your own, ‘dream course’. Course Coordinators, who are students hired to design and run Bachelor and Master’s level courses at CEMUS in collaboration with staff, researchers and colleagues, are asked already at the job interview: What would you change in the course? Two coordinators for each course have a few months to plan and design the course, with support from CEMUS colleagues and a Course Working Group (See more about the model at: Transcending Boundaries). This unique model was definitely what caught my eye when I was looking for Master’s programmes from the other side of the world – Japan. I knew no one in and nothing about Europe, let alone Sweden. Students hired to design and run a course – what would that look like? Could that model be working? I was skeptical. But extremely intrigued. I decided to apply for the Master’s programme in Sustainable Development at UU & SLU that was connected to CEMUS. Even if it wasn’t working perfectly, it’s an interesting idea. Could be worth getting an insider’s view. After many applications, now I am a Course Coordinator, second year in. Just finishing a very busy semester, and at the start of a new year, I’m going to choose to write about something I want to explore further in the future: empowerment. And relating that to one of the courses I coordinated. * * * In Japan, I think people feel that things can’t change in society, whatever problem it may have. More so, it’s hard for people to see their role in changing it either. People feel so disempowered. Maybe this is similar in other parts of the world too. Cramming knowledge is still the dominant form of education in Japan, critical thinking is not valued, and hierarchy is prevalent in the classroom and in organizations. Coming from that perspective, the participatory and critical education that CEMUS practices, the democracy the organization strives internally, and the opportunity and responsibility it gives to student coordinators like me is, in short, groundbreaking. After studying in the U.S. and Sweden, I feel that Japanese education is definitely not helping for people to feel empowered. But what could be education that is empowering? While coordinating the course Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures, perhaps it makes sense to say that empowerment was implicitly one guiding theme in designing the assignments and activities. The semester starts with a ‘30 Day Challenge’, where students choose one thing to change in their everyday life to make it more sustainable and try it for 30 days. They present their outcome and experience in a creative format – posters, videos, comics, etc., and somewhat surprisingly, their stories are super positive and encouraging. I had a student challenge her own ‘shopaholic’ behavior, forbidding herself to buy new clothes for 30 days. She came out of the challenge saying that she felt better, liberated not feeling the need to keep up with the latest trends, and ‘actually felt satisfied with myself for once’. During the semester, we have the different groups of students use half of each class to organize discussion activities called ‘Student-led Sessions’. In a sense, my colleague Alejandro Marcos Valls and I, coordinators of this course, had set up this course in the way we thought it would be the best course ever, and so we opened up for the students to use their turn to create the rest of the class. The students used different methods – quizzes, group discussions with various questions and themes, Fish Bowl discussions, etc. It was always fun for me to see what they come up with, and exciting to see sometimes otherwise quiet students being in the spotlight to lead the class. The final group project that students work on for 7 weeks is perhaps what Alejandro and I put in the most effort to develop: Back from the Future We Want. Here we asked students to develop their ideas on: What is the future we want? and How do we get there? Our reflection of the Fall 2015 will be coming out as a chapter in Envisioning futures for environmental and sustainability education in February 2017. What do you think? Do you think this fits what could be empowering education? Maybe I should catch one of the students that took this course and have them write about their experience. * * * So this was just a sneak peak of what I’ve been working on recently, out of many other things I wanted to write about. (Maybe I’ll occupy another space for that another time.) And maybe I’ll finish with one direction that CEMUS should work on more. I just finished reading Strangers in Their Own Land, a book that explores the American conservative south. The author talks about exploring the other side of your ‘empathy wall’, in other words, people you don’t agree with, in the context of the widened political divide. At a nation the other day, my partner and I were discussing with my colleague Lakin Anderson, who was the Course Coordinator for the course The Global Economy 2 years ago when we were taking the course. My partner was saying: “In the Global Economy, I remember that lecturer who had a position that I totally didn’t agree with. And I really appreciated having that lecturer, since then I could really understand where he was coming from to get that perspective.” In the era of social media where we tend to get information that you agree with and hang out increasingly with likeminded people, it is so easy to get into your ‘Echo Chamber’ of ideas. But in this time, we need to stop ridiculing the voters of Trump or Brexit or Sweden Democrats, or whoever you don’t agree with, as ‘stupid’ or ‘uneducated’ or ‘racist’. How do we not lose and even develop a language to truly communicate with people we strongly disagree with? As CEMUS strives to be a meeting place that transcends boundaries, the challenge is pressing and real. Let’s explore the other side of the Empathy Wall. What would this sort of education look like? Director of studies at CEMUS 2017 we celebrate CEMUS and all the people that made it happen – students, professors, course coordinators, researchers, university administrators, practitioners, writers, artists. People, human beings, working tirelessly together to make the world into a better place. We remember those magic moments when our efforts exceeded our expectations and try to learn from our many failures. 25 years is a long time in a human being’s life, and still somehow time flies.I came to Uppsala University back in 1998, studying whatever courses interested me at the time – art history, philosophy, anthropology. Having a previous interest in environmental issues and social justice, I took my first course at CEMUS in 2002, Environment and Development Studies – Theory and Analysis (Miljö- och utvecklingsstudier – teori och analys), followed by the Method and Project-course (Toan och Moppen om ni minns). Together the courses made up a full time semester at CEMUS. The passionate and knowledgeable course coordinators (thank you Niclas Hällström, David Kronlid, Robert Österbergh) always questioned our preconceived understanding of the world, and in combination with wise and experienced guest lecturers the course was the best I had taken at the university. That spring semester changed my life and made me see how education could change the world – one heart, mind and student at a time. Later as a student representative and course coordinator I saw the potential of what CEMUS as whole could be and do in the world, that’s why I’m still here. They say 2016 was a horrible year, annus horribilis, and in some sense maybe 2016 was worse, but each year holds its own horrors, terrors, death, but also love, compassion, courage. CEMUS can’t save the world on its own, but we can be a refugee of sorts where ideas, people meet and learn, unlearn together in education as well as in research. The same can be said of the role of Uppsala’s universities and colleges. Year by year, together, humanity can make the world a better place for all – planet and people. We have the genius to save this place. Listen to “This Place” by Joni Mitchell. Some numbers and timelines in relationship to CEMUS +25:
The Forest Knows Where You Are
by Isak Stoddard
not interested
in Cheery blossoms.
– Matsuo Basho[1]
But a question that remains is if is a smaller tree, shaded by the older trees above, with our students and roots [8] holding CEMUS to the ground, and with branches and leaves reaching for the little sunlight that is let through the canopy [9]. Or is CEMUS rather that unruly quality of life in trees, which might make branches turn in new and unexpected directions, refusing to conform to dominant trajectories set forth by external or internal circumstances?
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you Are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you.” [10]
[1] Matsuo Basho was a Japanese poet who lived 1644-1694.
[2] The course was run in Swedish and was called Människan & Naturen. It is unfortunately no longer offered at CEMUS, but the syllabus can still be found here: http://www.uu.se/utbildning/utbildningar/selma/kursplan/?kKod=1MV001
[3] Peter Wohlleben (2016), The hidden life of trees. Greystone Books.
[4] Or your favorite word of choice when facing something you’d rather not discuss to deeply.
[5]Press Release from Umeå University: World’s Oldest living tree discovered in Sweden. April 16, 2018. http://info.adm.umu.se/NYHETER/PressmeddelandeEng.aspx?id=3061
[6] The University of Bologna was founded in 1088. The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco was founded already in 859 but is still over 8 times younger than the Old Kjippen.
[7] Snow, C.P. (1959). The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge University Press.
[8] CEMUS’ student organization actually goes by the name CEMUS Roots.
[9] Around 3% in the average beech forest, and much less for the average interdisciplinary centre for sustainability research and education in the average university (such as Uppsala).
[10] The Poem is called ‘Lost’. It is an old Native American elder story rendered into modern English by David Wagoner, in The Heart Aroused – Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America by David Whyte, Currency Doubleday, New York, 1996.
To re-educate desire: practicing pluralism, participation and possibility
by Jakob Grandin
Download PDF here
[1] A grant from Forum för ämnesdidaktiska studier at Uppsala University carved out the space where the reflections in this essay were initiated; it is acknowledged with gratitude.
[2] Miguel Abensour, translated by E.P. Thomson, quoted in Webb, Darren, ‘Educational Archaeology and the Practice of Utopian Pedagogy’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 2017, p. 2.
[3] For a discussion of anticipatory practices and anticipatory action, see Anderson, Ben, ‘Preemption, Precaution, Preparedness: Anticipatory Action and Future Geographies.’ Progress in Human Geography 34, no. 6 (2010)
[4] Haiven, Max, and Alex Khasnabish. The Radical Imagination : Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, London: Zed Books Ltd, 2014, p. 3.
[5] Webb, Darren, ‘Educational Archaeology and the Practice of Utopian Pedagogy’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 2017, p. 4
[6] See, for example, Miller, Riel, ‘Futures Literacy: a Hybrid Strategic Scenario Method’, Futures, 39 (2007), 341–62 and O’Brien, Karen, ‘Global Environmental Change III: Closing the Gap Between Knowledge and Action’, Progress in Human Geography, 37 (2012), 587–96.
[7] Gibson-Graham, J-K, ‘Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for `Other Worlds’’, Progress in Human Geography, 32 (2008), p. 614.
[8] I would argue that this is a dynamic effect of CEMUS’ educational model; for an introduction, see the chapters by Robert Österbergh and David O. Kronlid as well as Jakob Grandin in Hald, Matilda (ed.), Transcending Boundaries: How CEMUS is changing how we teach, meet and learn, (Uppsala: CEMUS, 2011). For an example of how participation may be designed, see Grandin, Jakob, Sanna Gunnarsson and Sara Andersson, ‘“It feels almost surreal”: being strategic about how we design participation in order to enlarge the space of the possible’ in the ActSHEN Booklet, available at http://blogs.helsinki.fi/action-for-sustainability/.
[9] Allan Meggill, quoted in Wals, Arjen E J, ‘Between Knowing What Is Right and Knowing That Is It Wrong to Tell Others What Is Right: on Relativism, Uncertainty and Democracy in Environmental and Sustainability Education’, Environmental Education Research, 16 (2010), p. 145
[10] Jameson, Frederic, Archeologies of the Future (London: Verso, 2005), p. xii.
[11] Gibson-Graham, J-K, ‘Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for ‘Other Worlds’’, Progress in Human Geography, 32 (2008), p. 614.
[12] On the contested and broad nature of sustainable development, see for example Hopwood, Bill, Mary Mellor, and Geoff O’Brien, ‘Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches’, Sustainable Development, 13 (2005), 38–52, Sachs, Wolfgang, Planet Dialectics (Zed Books Ltd., 1999) Wals, Arjen E J, and Bob Jickling, ‘“Sustainability” in Higher Education: From Doublethink and Newspeak to Critical Thinking and Meaningful Learning’, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 3 (2002), 221–32
[13] Osberg, Deborah, ‘“Enlarging the Space of the Possible” Around What It Means to Educate and Be Educated’, Complicity: an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 6 (2009), p. viii.
[14] See Læssøe, Jeppe, ‘Education for Sustainable Development, Participation and Socio‐Cultural Change’, Environmental Education Research, 16 (2010), 39–57
[15] See Johan Gärdebo’s entry for week 15 in the CEMUS Diaries.
[16] See Alexis Engström & Susanna Barrineau’s entry for week 12 in CEMUS Diaries.
[17] Healy, S., ‘Epistemological Pluralism and the “Politics of Choice”’, Futures, 35 (2003), p. 697.
A Council of All Beings 1992-2017
by Daniel Mossberg
The Earth Rights Conference in Sigtuna, April 21-22
CEMUS Taught Me How To Run
by Johan Gärdebo
(2) Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Under- standing Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
(3) Run For Your Life: http://www2.runforyourlife.nu/en/about-2/
Poor Man's Kingdom
by Olivia Ahltorp
X is the space
by Sofia Tonetti
25 years of staying with the trouble - or why won’t the professor tell me how to save the world?
by Alexis Engström & Susanna Barrineau
Haraway, D. (2014) Lecture: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble. In Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet on 05/09/2014. http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/
Think globally, act locally
by Magnus Josephson
CE“MUSE”
By Hannah Sutton
When talking about climate change…
by Anna Joos Lindberg
future in which climate change has decimated life on Earth, the narrator
seems mystified by what he perceives as a failure to act. ‘What state of
mind were we in,‘ the Last Man wonders, ‘to face extinction and simply
shrug it off?’” (Weston in Animate Planet, 2016)
there is no hope at all
The crazy craze of the human race
reducing life into a market place
the power of narration back
and reclaim our lands of fantasy
it’s a white man’s maze
but more so, fantasy’s disgrace
that is one version of living life
The silence of the rest
is dying to reveal…
Newbies at Work - Conversation in the CEMUS Kitchen
By Angelica Halvarsson & Lisa Plattner
Newbie #2 (brand new glossophobic* course coordinator)
[Opener of almost every CEMUS conversation]
Newbie #1: Great, it’s so much fun! I already told them to stop buying Nestlé products. Person X: Alright [perplexed face]
Newbie #2: I finally made it to three minutes of public speaking before my face and neck turned red.
Person X: Congrats on the new personal record! So, whom have you invited for next week? Newbie #1: Well, after email exchanges between 8 different professors and PhD students, we still don’t know.
Newbie #2: And one class with just us course coordinators for the entire period is enough. Do you have any recommendations?
Person X: Yes, sure! Which field are you thinking of?
Newbie #1: Threats to human existence from a meta-ethical nihilist perspective.
Person X: Hmmm…sorry, never had someone like that in my course, but you should definitely have a look at our excel database.
Newbie #2: Thanks, we’ll check it out!
[Proceeding to their office, Newbie #1 and Newbie #2 log onto their computers, surrounded by semi-aquatic plants and empty ink pens]
Newbie #1: Have you already printed out the attendance list for this week?
Newbie #2: I’d love to once I figure out who is actually attending the course.
Newbie #1: I think it’s time that we sit down and memorize their names and faces.
[Person X comes into the office with a big smile]
Person X: It’s fika time, come on, stop working!
[As the irresistible, overbearing scent of coffee and blue cheese gingerbread cookies enters our office, the newbies find it increasingly difficult to sift through the endless excel cells of lecturer names]
Newbie #2: So… Studentportalen…
Newbie #1: I don’t get the system yet, but could you maybe program a new block called ‘assignments’.
Newbie #2: Sure, it takes like 10 seconds
[Newbie #2 opens mail.uu.se> New message> Subject: URGENT QUESTION> Hey, lovely course resource person! Hope your day is fine. We were just wondering real quick how to add new blocks and sub-blocks on Studentportalen? Take care!]
Newbie #1: Cool, you digital natives will conquer the world.
Newbie #2: Oh by the way, do you already have access to the lecture halls?
Newbie #1: I’m actually still waiting for my key-card and course email access. But I’ll work it out. How are you feeling about our next class?
Newbie #2: Totally fine, although I’d like to talk for longer without a stutter this time. You as an activist have no problem to speak in front of a group of people, what are your tips for me?
Newbie #1: Well, just imagine you need to save the world now, trust me, that makes everything easier. But seriously, just imagine we’re living through a mass extinction event, apocalyptic weather and an ever-increasing wage gap between rich and poor, and that you as an educator are the last hope for the future of our kind. That’s what I usually do.
Newbie #2: Thanks, I’ll give it a shot! So, when it comes to the literature and materials for next week, I have this cool new video I want to show the class. Take a look.
Newbie #2: Let’s have a look in the CEMUS library, you can always get some inspiration there.
Newbie #2: We just split them into groups and give them whiteboards of course! Every group gets a theory and has to summarize the main ideas and then they present their results in front of the class. Voilá!
Newbie #1: We should not forget about the post-its! And yeah, let’s do a game in the beginning of the class, I saw a new book the other day in the lounge about pedagogics in the classroom.
[As the coordinators were overcome with excitement, resources, and helpful advice from their colleagues, they sat in their sunlit office with mismatched cups of Chocomilk and coordinated happily ever after]
CEMUS - Will you be my valentine?
by Friederike May
And the ocean moans whispers in the wind.
CEMUS did a thing to me.
When I am with you, I blow all planetary boundaries.
With the iridescent names of my children.
A place to learn and change the world.
Vegan timeframes
And crispy ideas.
Of chaos and structure only you can define
A place to call home and a place that will change and challenge what was before.
And enthusiasm defies the pessimism of age.
Into the depth of things, realising it is a dream, I wake up and realise I’m home.
CEMUS still warms your heart.
From love is in the air to carbon rising out of the ground.
it might be how y’all tore down that wall.
As to what we’re doing, we have no clue.
Run from your idols
by David Kronlid
Dreams that dreamers dream
by Bon V. Logburg
Finding your way
by Malin Andersson
Why am I still around?
by Hannes Willner
What is your dream course?
by Sachiko Ishihara
If you could create your dream course, how would it look like?
2017 we celebrate CEMUS
by Daniel Mossberg