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The Climate Justice Universities Union: Collective Action to Support the Transformative Power of Higher Education
With humanity facing a cascading set of interconnected crises, how can our universities become more transformative in how they contribute to society? In what new ways can the higher education sector engage to accelerate systemic and structural changes to create better futures for all? These questions are being explored by a group of university staff, students and community members from across the island of Ireland, and around the world, who have come together to build collective power within higher education. A new collective called the Climate Justice Universities Union has been established to provide a place for people to connect on these issues.
During this increasingly disruptive time, it is important to recognize the active role that higher education plays in shaping societies. The Climate Justice Universities Union is a new organization intended to foster new coalitions and collaborations across the higher education sector to broaden the perspectives and priorities within universities. One goal of the Climate Justice Universities Union is to encourage universities to be more directly linked to the needs of marginalized communities and vulnerable households – and less connected to corporate interests and profit-seeking priorities.
Instead of higher education continuing to reproduce unjust and unsustainable social, political and economic ideas and structures, the Climate Justice Universities Union is committed to challenging and transforming extractive and exploitative systems at every level from the local and institutional to the national and international.
This new organization emerged from shared concerns about whether higher education was responding effectively to the challenges facing humanity. In 2023, about 100 people from across the island of Ireland came together in Galway, and since then there have been People’s Assembly-style events in each of the four provinces of Ireland in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. The spring 2025 meeting was hosted at Maynooth University in collaboration with Maynooth’s Green Campus on March 7th 2025; in honour of International Women’s Day the theme was Building Collective Power for Feminist Climate Justice: The Role of Higher Education.
Advocating for change in universities is challenging work. The neoliberal creep and the financialisation and corporatisation of higher education has reinforced a system where individuals and institutions are increasingly pushed into competition with each other for jobs, grants and promotions. But the Climate Justice Universities Union resists competition by promoting collective action and by connecting people.
Launched in Autumn 2024, the Climate Justice Universities Union is a transdisciplinary collective of university workers, students, activists and members of other communities. Each person represents a diversity of views, experiences and expertise – united by a common desire to build coalitions that help redirect the power of higher education towards transformative socio-ecological change.
The Climate Justice Universities Union is made up of individual Members, Working Groups, Institutional Representatives and a Coordinating Team. While based on the island of Ireland, membership is also growing internationally. Membership is free and open to anyone who believes that higher education has a critical role to play in societal transformation toward a more just and healthy future. The foundation is a commitment to work towards rebalancing human society within ecological systems of reciprocity and regeneration, and recognising the need to care for land, water, biodiversity and human well-being as part of natural interconnected healthy ecosystems.
All who share these commitments are welcome to join. Also, the Climate Justice Working Group of the Maynooth Green Campus will be engaged directly with the Climate Justice Universities Union. To find out more, to get involved, and to sign up to become a member of this new collective, check out the website here:
https://www.climatejusticeuniversitiesunion.org/
