Untold Stories of the Conservation Movement: Race, Power, and Privilege
with Dr. Dorceta Taylor
The conservation movement was founded in an era of great social upheaval, and rampant racism and discrimination. Early conservation and environmental activists espoused progressive ideas at the same time they embraced the racism of the time. For a long time ideas in conservation that encouraged the taking of lands from people of color, slavery, and the discounting of the contributions of people of color to conservation efforts went unnamed and uncriticized. Today, the conservation movement is grappling with the past and trying to forge a new path forward that will allow for greater diversity and inclusion.
May 7th:
10:45-11:45 – Anti-Racism Strategies Panel https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/99797142984
12:00-1:30 – “Untold Stories of the Conservation Movement: Race, Power, and Privilege” https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/97160217588
1:45-2:45 meeting with graduate students (open, drop-in event moderated by Kindra De’Arman) https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98056325400
Dr. Dorceta Taylor is a professor at the Yale School for the Environment. She is a renowned scholar of environmental justice, who has published a wide range of influential works.
Her most recent book, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection, examines how conservation ideas and politics are tied to social dynamics such as racism, classism, and gender discrimination. Revelations made in the book about the ideologies of John Muir, the slave-owning past of John James Audubon and the eugenicist history of the Save the Redwoods League and the National Park Service have led to the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and the Save the Redwoods League acknowledging the problematic discourses and actions of their founders. A recent congressional hearing on the lack of diversity in the Department of the Interior also acknowledged the significance of this work as well as other institutional diversity research.
Dr. Taylor’s 2014 book, Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility, examines the racial and socio-economic dimensions of exposure to environmental hazards in the U.S. She is also the author of The Environment and the People in American Cities: 1600s-1900s. Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change. The book examines the history of environmental inequality and urban environmental activism. It received the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award given by the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association in 2010.
Dr. Taylor was honored by the Smithsonian Institution in 2019. She is the recipient of several awards including the National Audubon Society Women in Conservation Award, the National Science Foundation Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, the Burton V. Barnes Award for Academic Excellence from the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Charles Horton Cooley Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Michigan Sociological Association, and the Frederick B. Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award from the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association.
Sponsors: Center for Environmental Futures, UO Department of Sociology, UO Environmental Studies Program, and UO Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies
