Will President Gay Lead on Climate?

As University President Claudine Gay’s tenure begins, students have arrived on campus after choking on wildfire smoke, roasting in withering heat, or navigating floodwaters. All have images of the annihilation of Lahaina seared in their minds.

How should Gay deal with the climate-traumatized community now in her care?

In her previous role as the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, she established the importance of residential deans taking on “a pastoral role” — “a special responsibility to the well-being of students.” Now, as University President, she has a duty to serve as a moral model.

Climate is a deeply moral matter. As the crisis advances to catastrophe and cataclysm, those who pay the price are predominantly people of color, many in the Global South. Unlike elites, the billions living on just dollars a day in slums, townships, and favelas have contributed little to what’s driving destruction.

The generational injustice, too, is grotesque. Today’s students face a future degraded by their elders’ inaction. The generations beyond that have no say will lead lives determined by whether we act immediately and aggressively on climate.

Given these extraordinary circumstances, will Gay transcend the pastoral and rise to the prophetic?

She has a predecessor who serves as an inspiration. James B. Conant, Class of 1914, was at Harvard’s helm when World War II began in Europe. In 1940, before Eleanor Roosevelt had declared “this is no ordinary time,” he made his own personal commitment to action despite the derision of isolationists. Through 1941, he committed Harvard’s resources to developing innovation that would prove invaluable. In the hours after the Imperial Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he fully embraced his pastoral call. Some 6,000 students and faculty jammed into Sanders Theater, Memorial Church, and connected lecture halls across campus to join him in listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, delivering his “date that shall live in infamy” speech. Afterwards, he addressed the crowd, many of whom would soon be in uniform. He assured them they would emerge from the shared peril victorious and free.

Immediately, he fully committed the school to the struggle. Harvard soon became known as “Conant’s Arsenal.” His crucial role in making the world we now inhabit continues to be honored. Savvy viewers will spot him in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”

Today, we are in desperate need for a similar all-in, all-out mobilization on climate. Like WWII, we are getting into the struggle perilously late, after delay and denial. These past months have shown the truth of Thomas Paine’s famous dictum: “Time makes more converts than reason.” There is no longer any need for abstract scientific reasoning to convince us of what has become self-evident. If the incineration of Lahaina isn’t our Pearl Harbor, what will be?

What would a mobilized university look like? It would have a fundamental change in focus, far beyond first-stage goals like divestiture and a zero-carbon campus. The absurdity of our current aspirations is obvious when seen in a different context. Sultan Al Jaber, President of the upcoming COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference, is also the Chief Executive Officer of the United Arab Emirates’ national oil company. His climate cred? He says that his company is planning to reduce the carbon footprint of their oil production processes.

Is our “zero-carbon” campus any better? Elite educational institutions churn out graduates empowered and encouraged to pursue an outdated, unsustainable lifestyle. Is it really a lifestyle? Given the climate consequences, it may be better to call it a “deathstyle.” Much as “it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society,” what is the measure of success in a suicidal society?

Now, imagine a Harvard that envisions and instills a different sense of identity, of success. Instead of thinking as consumers, we come to understand ourselves as sustainers. That may seem too tie dye and paisley, but our survival as a civilization may well depend on it.

Harvard’s Class of 2100 might take pride in President Gay’s visionary leadership. She would surpass President Conant’s achievement by helping drive the transformation from consumer culture to sustainer society.

Still, Gay can, if she pleases, maintain business as usual. There is no national, much less global, declaration of a climate emergency — yet. She may set aside the urgent pleas of students, faculty, alumni, scientists, and even the United Nations Secretary-General.

One thing seems certain, though. She will either be the first Harvard president who takes an active, aggressive stance on climate — or the last that doesn’t.

Carl Lindemann attended Harvard Divinity School through 1995.