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Penn creates climate change vice provost role

Will lead efforts to confront ‘existential challenge of climate change’

The University of Pennsylvania now employs a vice provost solely focused on climate change.

The “Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action” is tasked with “support[ing] Penn’s leadership in addressing the climate crisis,” according to the campus newspaper.

“This would include responsibilities such as implementing the campus-wide Climate and Sustainability Action Plan, leading academic programs in climate science and policy and enhancing education and training focused on climate mitigation and adaptation,” The Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

The Philadelphia Ivy League university has identified fighting climate change as a core part of its “strategic framework.”

Penn’s framework states:

Every person at Penn and all that we do has some nexus to the existential challenge of climate change. We must, in an all-in University effort, do more. From leading energy science and policy across disciplines to designing and caring for the built environment, Penn will seek additional ways to support and recruit the best minds; fuel initiatives that advance understanding and promise solutions; and adopt institutional best practices for the sake of our future and our planet.

Interim President Larry Jameson provided further comments on the new position as well as another new job, a vice provost for the arts.

“We promised to lead on the great challenges of the world, and climate change may just be the greatest challenge we all face,” President Jameson stated in Penn Today. “And at a moment when it is critical that people come together through deeper understanding and empathy for others, the arts are core to creating connection and fostering common humanity.”

“The most tangible goal of this program is to reduce the temperature of the planet and to protect the planet’s inhabitants and ecosystem while we get there,” Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives David Asch stated in Penn Today.

The university also covers the issue of climate change in various courses.

Classes offered in the past include “White Nationalism in the age of Climate Change” and “Imagining Environmental Justice,” as previously reported by The College Fix.

Its “Climate Week” in September featured a dance “dedicated to Monarch butterflies,” as The Fix previously reported.

MORE: Gay couples at greater risk for climate change, UCLA study finds

IMAGE: Alessandro Biascoli/Canva Pro; College Fix edits

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