Learn about those involved in the
Environmental Justice Campus Committee!
Find below each of the EJCC's affiliate organizations, their missions, and ways to contact with them.
Duke Undergraduate
Environmental Union
The UEU's mission is to serve as the hub of all undergraduate environmental activity, communications, and programming at Duke. They partner with environmental clubs, community members, neighboring institutions, Duke faculty members, administrators, university staff, and the larger student body to facilitate conversations and collaboration around sustainability on campus and beyond.
Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment
Duke Environment provides opportunities for purpose-driven individuals to learn about or pursue careers that make positive contributions to the environment and the world. We bring together bright, talented and ambitious people from across the globe whose interests vary from conservation to climate change and everything in between.
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Energy Initiative
The Duke University Energy Initiative is a university-wide, interdisciplinary collaboration focused on advancing an accessible, affordable, reliable, and clean energy system. The Initiative reaches across business, engineering, environment, law, policy, and the arts and sciences to educate tomorrow’s energy innovators, develop new solutions through research, and improve energy decisions by engaging business and government leaders.
Duke Campus Farm
The Duke Campus Farm is a one-acre working farm owned and operated by Duke University that provides sustainably-grown produce and food systems education for Duke and its surrounding communities. More important than the thousands of pounds of food that we grow, however, are the opportunities the farm provides for engaging and reimagining the ways we cultivate, access, value, and think about food. Our mission is to catalyze positive change in the food system.
Asian / Pacific Studies Institute
The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI) is the focal point of research and teaching on the Asia Pacific region at Duke University. APSI fosters an active community of scholars of East and Southeast Asia, promotes the highest standards of undergraduate and graduate education in Asian Studies, enhances awareness of Asian cultures at Duke and across the Triangle, and provides academic and cultural resources about Asia to schools, colleges and universities in the southeastern United States.
Franklin Humanities Institute
Founded in 1999, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) is built on a fundamentally collaborative model befitting the Duke University emphasis on knowledge in the service of society. Through interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, we seek to encourage the conversations, partnerships, and collaborations that continually stimulate creative and fresh humanistic research, writing, teaching, and practice at Duke. Inspired by the scholarly and civic example of John Hope Franklin, we also support work that engages questions of race and social equity in their most profound historical and global dimensions.
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies brings together members of our Duke, local and worldwide communities in order to promote new ideas, research, language training and artistic representations about Latin America and the Caribbean. Through innovative coursework, academic conferences, global exchanges, outreach to local schools, and exposure to thought leaders from across the Americas, we prepare future leaders who may work in fields related to Latin America and the Caribbean in education, business, arts, government and many other careers.
Center for Multicultural Affairs
The Center for Multicultural Affairs is committed to creating a more equitable and inclusive campus environment. We embolden students to examine the intersections of identity, to think critically about diversity and social justice, and to utilize their unique and collective voices to enact positive change.
Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture
The African American presence in the Duke University undergraduate community began in 1963, and although it would not be realized for two decades, the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was born of that moment in history and bears its markings. Established in 1983, The Center remains a safe, welcoming and supportive space that reflects the core values, culture, mission and perspectives of Duke's Black community. The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture strives to promote racial understanding, build community, and foster an appreciation for and increase knowledge of Black people, Black history, Black culture, and the vast contributions of people of the African Diaspora.
Black Student Alliance
​For the purposes of intellectually, socially, and culturally enriching the Duke community, the Black Student Alliance promotes academic achievement and intellectual pursuit, cultivates dynamic leadership, and strives to eliminate social barriers for all. Ultimately, the Black Student Alliance recognizes the humanity of others and demands that they do the same.
Environmental Justice Lab
The Environmental Justice Lab is devoted to the study of environmental justice and questions at the intersection of race, poverty, and the environment. EJ Lab researchers are currently examining projects that explore the impacts of: concentrated animal feeding operations on communities in North Carolina; the role of environmental concerns in neighborhood gentrification using a unique panel survey of households in Los Angeles; and disparities in exposure to toxic releases across the United States and the role of state institutions, policy and social movement organizations in affecting those disparities.
Duke Environmental Justice Network
The Duke University Environmental Justice Network (Duke EJN) aims to develop and support a coalition of over 250 students, staff, professors, deans, professionals, practitioners, and concerned community members across disciplines as broad ranging as environmental policy, environmental science, engineering, public policy, economics, law, human rights, and more to address environmental injustices.
More about Duke EJN coming soon!
Mi Gente
Mi Gente was founded in 1992 as the central Latinx organization at Duke University. Mi Gente’s mission is to provide a sense of community among Latinxs at Duke as well as to promote awareness and sponsor activities about Latinx cultural, political, educational, and social issues. It is a forum for individuals to explore the diverse histories, identities, and traditions that make up the Latinx world. We strive to serve as a voice and to raise awareness on campus for Latinx and other multicultural concerns. One of Mi Gente’s priorities is to reach out to first year students and provide them with a home and a familia as they make their way through Duke. Mi Gente also strives to develop relations with the Durham Latinx population through activities such as community service and outreach programs.
Asian Student Association
It is the mission of the ASA to: create an open space centered in care, a culture of intentional relationship-building, and inclusivity for Duke’s Asian community; form sustainable relationships, support, and be in solidarity with other campus affinity groups; demand that Duke implement institutional change that creates an inclusive space for marginalized students; be a communal learning space that is invested in the history of the Asian American as a political identity; remain accountable and open to the general body’s needs and interests, constantly growing and changing as an organization.
Duke Student Government, Services and Sustainability
The Services & Sustainability Committee is dedicated to any policy and programming regarding Duke student services and their accessibility. The Services & Sustainability Committee focuses on ensuring that the university continues to prioritize sustainability throughout all aspects of campus. By partnering with Sustainable Duke and environmental focused student-run organizations across campus, the Services & Sustainability Committee hopes to pursue policy and projects that lead to a greener Duke. While the purview of this committee is expansive, allowing for collaboration with many university departments, the Services & Sustainability Committee primarily aims to both improve and make accessible student services across campus and to better the sustainability efforts of the university.
Muslim Student Association
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) at Duke University is a student-run and SOFC-chartered group on campus. The association strives to represent Muslim students at Duke, and foster campus and community-wide engagement with Islam and Muslims. Duke MSA’s constituency is comprised of a diverse group of students - undergraduate and graduate, international and American - united by each student’s common belief or interest in Islam. For these students, the MSA is responsible for supporting their religious needs and interests by arranging appropriate facilities, networks, and accommodations on campus. Duke MSA plans religious, social, political, and cultural activities on campus related to Islam and Muslims in order to serve the needs of the wider Duke community, regardless of their beliefs.
Duke Conservation Tech
Duke Conservation Tech aims to harness the power of technology to build and deploy sustainable solutions to ecological problems. We’ve built partnerships with organizations from the World Wildlife Fund to Delta Airlines to identify the biggest threats facing our environment and develop effective ways to mitigate them. This year, we’re working with members of the local Durham community to make an impact at home. We’d love to have you on board.
Sustainable Duke
Sustainable Duke is charged with reducing the environmental impact of Duke University, strategic planning for sustainability, educating the campus community regarding sustainability on campus, and developing programs to positively influence campus sustainability behavior and operations.
Blue Devils United
Blue Devils United is the student group for LGBTQ undergraduate students, allies, and friends. Blue Devils United seeks to provide social opportunities for LGBTQ students and their allies, outreach to students at Duke and in the community, and to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ individuals both at Duke and beyond.
Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic
The Environmental Law and Policy Clinic is training the next generation of leaders to solve environmental problems and providing access to justice in underserved communities. In this clinic, students from Duke Law, Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, and other graduate schools develop a broad array of tools and insights from their various disciplines — law, policy, and science — while working together to handle cases using interdisciplinary approaches. Students develop skills in litigation, mediation, negotiation, and conflict resolution, and they often are able to contribute their own entrepreneurial solutions to environmental dilemmas. They use a collaborative approach to work on a wide variety of matters, encompassing water quality, air quality, natural resources conservation, sustainable development, public-trust resources, and environmental justice.
Duke Energy Club
The Duke Undergraduate Energy Club is a campus organization of students interested in learning more about the energy industry. At the club, members explore the real world energy sector, engage with a greater energy community at Duke University, and strive to solve the critical energy challenges of today. The club connects student, alumni, professionals, and academics through many opportunities, from energy research and consulting projects to events throughout the years, such as career series, speaker events and Energy Week at Duke. The club supports energy justice through the Energy Training program, especially the Energy Equity module, and events and projects on energy justice.
Duke Climate Coalition
Duke Climate Coalition strives to mobilize student power through coalition building that first and foremost centers the experiences of BIPOC communities and the work that marginalized communities have spent their lives fighting for. We aim to leverage Duke University’s institutional influence to create just, high-impact, and system-level progress on climate change within marginalized communities with the understanding that the institution itself has caused harm to the very individuals that we hope to support. We resist climate and environmental injustice through our work by ensuring transparency within the university’s administration and fight for fair representation of community interests by holding decision-makers accountable for their climate and social responsibilities. DCC works in collaboration with its graduate student branch, Duke Graduate Climate Coalition (DGCC) to further these goals.
Sunrise Movement Durham
The Sunrise Movement is a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We’re building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people. Sunrise Durham is the local branch.
Kenan Institute of Ethics
From current policy debates about the ethics of migration, cyber-security, or artificial intelligence to historical interrogations of the rise of a post-secular society and nature of genocide to philosophical puzzles about the limits of individual responsibility or foundations of happiness, the Kenan Institute for Ethics takes seriously the notion that ethical questions and problems are indeed everywhere.
The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity
The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity is a scholarly collaborative that studies the causes and consequences of inequality and develops remedies for these disparities and their adverse effects. Concerned with the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of uneven access to resources, opportunity and capabilities, Cook Center researchers take a cross-national comparative approach to the study of human difference and disparity. Considering both global and local shortcomings, Cook Center scholars not only address the overarching social problem of general inequality, but they also explore social problems associated with gender, race, ethnicity and religious affiliation.
Policy for the People
Policy for the People (PftP) is a graduate student organization at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. We aim to provide an inclusive environment for Sanford students to dive into leftist ideology, bring progressive voices and events to Sanford, challenge the status quo within the Sanford curriculum, and push for progressive policies outside of the classroom.
