This week, we’ll look at the impact of global climate change and explore partnerships for local adaptation. We’re joined by Ed Maurer, Professor in the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University, and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. Professor Maurer joined Santa Clara’s Civil Engineering Department in 2003, where he teaches courses in hydraulics, hydrology, water resources, and sustainability. His professional experience includes work in municipal water supply and wastewater engineering, climate change impacts, western tribal water rights, and rural community water supply projects in Latin America. His recent research contributions involve modeling large scale hydraulic dynamics, improving long lead forecasting, and studying regional impacts of climate change, especially on water.

How can we ensure that the benefits of environmental regulation, as well as the burdens of toxins and pollution, are justly distributed? Today, we’ll look at a specific case in California filed with the Environmental Protection Agency in order to consider and evaluate all that is at stake for environmental justice. We’re joined today by Tseming Yang, Professor of Law at Santa Clara and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center. Professor Yang teaches environmental law, and his research focuses on the intersection of social justice and civil rights issues with environmental law. He served as Deputy General Counsel of the US Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama Administration, as Director of a USAID and State-department funded initiative to build China’s institutional capacity in environmental law and governance, and as an attorney in the Environmental Division of the US Department of Justice.

Environmental justice is a principle that affirms the right of all people to healthy, livable communities. Today we explore the ways in which academics from a range of university disciplines can effectively partner with advocacy groups, activists, and the broader community to advance the work of environmental justice. We’re joined by Chad Raphael, Professor in the Communication Department at Santa Clara, and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center. He has worked on environmental justice issues for over 20 years as a researcher, a consultant on communication campaigns, and a former chair of the board of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Today we’ll explore why Tamil women on Sri Lanka's tea plantations work in formal and informal labor economies in and beyond Sri Lanka. We’re joined by Mythri Jegathesan, Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at Santa Clara University and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. Her research focuses on gender, labor, minority politics, and development in the global south, specifically Sri Lanka and South Asia and she currently serves on the board of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies.

Today we’ll explore LGBTQ+ community advocacy and social action among school-aged children and their families.  We’re joined by Sonja Mackenzie, Assistant Professor in the Public Health Program at Santa Clara University and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. Her book, Structural Intimacies: Sexual Stories in the Black AIDS Epidemic, examines intersections of gender, sexuality, and racism and her current project looks at the work of community advocacy in relation to LGBTQ rights among some of our youngest members of society.

Today we’ll explore questions of gender justice from legal and advocacy perspectives, examining privilege and discrimination dynamics associated with gender expression and gender identity. We will also explore a new integrative approach to these issues through a methodology called gender in/sight. We’re joined by Stephanie Wildman and Adam Chang. Stephanie is Professor of Law, emerita at Santa Clara University whose scholarship emphasises systems of privilege, gender, race, and classroom dynamics. Adam Chang is an educator and community organizer, whose work engages refugee resettlement, LGBT civil rights, HIV prevention, and youth leadership.

Today we will examine how our criminal justice institutions function as socializing forces, particularly with respect to lessons on masculinity. We’re joined by Patrick Lopez-Aguado, Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Santa Clara University, and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. His research interests include juvenile justice, urban ethnography, and the collateral consequences of mass incarceration and he is currently completing a new book entitled Stick Together and Come Back Home.

Today we will examine the reality of gender violence on a global scale and consider emergent forms of community advocacy to effect transformative social change. We’re joined by Sharmila Lodhia, Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Santa Clara University and Bannan Faculty Fellow in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. Her research examines legal responses to violence against Indian women through a transnational lens, highlighting the impact of migrating spouses, traveling cultures, and shifting bodies of law.

Today, we’ll explore the impact of money on congressional representation. How is economic justice and the common good realized within our democracy today? We’re joined by Anne Baker, Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Santa Clara, and Bannan Institute Scholar in the Ignatian Center. She teaches courses on American Politics and her present research focuses on money in US Politics, particularly its impact on congressional elections and representation as well as the operations and strategies of political parties and interest groups.

This week we’ll critically examine how the Christian scriptural tradition underwrites historical and even contemporary commitments to economic justice. We’re joined by Catherine Murphy, Associate Professor of New Testament in the Religious Studies Department at Santa Clara and Bannan Institute scholar in the Ignatian Center. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the Bible, historical Jesus, gender and early Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a course on economic ethics, titled “Wealth, Work, and The Gospel”. She’s published three books and is currently preparing a book that situates early Christian testimonies in their economic and political contexts.