How do government policy-makers make decisions about potential threats to human health and the environment in the face of scientific uncertainty? The course develops the concept of Risk Assessment from the publication of the 1983 National Research Council (NRC) report commonly known as the "Red Book" which was used to rank the initial hazardous waste sites under the Superfund program. Using a variety of teaching tools, including lectures, panel discussions, and case studies, the course examines how public policy decisions regarding environmental risk are made and how effective those decisions are at reducing risks to affected populations. The course focuses on the complex interaction of science, economics, politics, laws, and regulations in dealing with environmental and public health risks. The course will begin with a review of the policy process and methods used in evaluating human health and environmental risks, including the traditional steps in the risk assessment process, including quantitative and qualitative aspects of hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. The course will then focus on how scientific uncertainty, risk perceptions, socio-economic disparities, risk communication, and politics influence environmental risk-based decision-making. Issues such as special populations (e.g., children, elderly, immune-compromised, woman of pregnancy age, etc.) must be considered when developing risk reduction strategies. The use of the "precautionary principle" will be discussed in the context of different types of environmental stressors (e.g., pesticides, chemicals, climate change, air pollution, water quality, and land use) and how this important controversial principle is applied differently in contrasting national and European risk management policies.

This course provides an introduction to the many forces that shape what we eat.These include psychological, political, biological, legal, economic, and social influences. We will discuss and critically evaluate sceintific research on food policies designed to improve the world's diet. This course will have strong focus on the communication of health information and issues of health disparities as they relate to food environments and food policies. In addition, course assignments, activities, and lectures are designed to develop skills related to critiquing research and communicating evidence-based opinions in a clear and compelling manner.

Many regard Germany as a leader in the transition to renewable energy. The Green Party has been a significant player in federal and local politics since 1981. The current Austrian chancellor is a member of the Green Party. Soon, Germany will shutter its last nuclear reactor. Work on the coal phase-out has already begun. Germans overwhelmingly support aggressive climate action by their government. How can we explain this? In this course, we will become familiar with current climate, environmental, and energy policy and practice in Germany and Austria, but we will also delve into the cultural history of German environmentalism. We'll learn about the origin of the German concept of sustainability in early 18th-century forestry; the role of the forest in Romanticism; the origin of the concepts of ecology and environment in the work of Ernst Haeckel and Jacob von Uexkull; the role of the mountains in Austrian environmental thinking; Nazi-era environmentalism; "Waldsterben," the anti-nuke movement and the rise of the Green Party; the "Energiewende"; and the impact of the uprising to protect the Hambacher Forest on the coal phase-out. We'll make use of readings from policy, history, and literature, and screen feature and documentary films. This course is taught in German.

Precious metals have shaped pre-Colombian economies and socio-cultural processes in the Americas for thousands of years. After 1492, gold and silver sent from the "New World" to the "Old World" played a key role in changing economies all over the world. Locally, mining centers were places marked by forced labor, conspicuous consumption, and the destruction of ecosystems. Internationally, gold and silver prices have long had outsized effects on monetary and trade policies. This course uses case studies to delve into the fascinating history of precious metals and mining in North and South America. We will analyze documents describing the gold objects ransacked by Spanish conquistadors, examine 17th Century proto-industrial silver mining at Potosi, trace the impact and human cost of the huge gold strikes in Minas Gerais, in colonial Brazil, read new work on the California and Yukon moments of "rush" and their long-term impact on US monetary policy, and follow new reports about the conflicts at the heart of transnational gold mining in the present. Students will gain experience working with primary sources and will produce an in-depth research paper.

This is a course on creating a business to attack a social problem and thereby accomplish both social impact and financial sustainability. For this course, social entrepreneurship is defined as entrepreneurship used to profitably confront social problems. This definition therefore views social entrepreneurship as a distinct alternative to public sector initiatives. The basic thesis is that many social problems, if looked at through an entrepreneurial lens, create opportunity for someone to launch a venture that generates profits by alleviating that social problem. This sets in motion a virtuous cycle - the entrepreneur is incented to generate more profits and in so doing, the more the profits made, the more the problem is alleviated. Even if it is not possible to eventually create a profit-making enterprise, the process of striving to do so can lead to a resource-lean not-for-profit entity. Creating a profitable social entrepreneurship venture is by no means a simple challenge. Cross-listed with MGMT 812.

What role can business play in helping to meet global societal needs, whether it involves the environment, improving health, expanding education or eradicating poverty? Is there any responsibility on the part of business to help meet those needs? What are models of successful business engagement in this area? How should success be measured? Are there limits to what businesses can and should do, and what institutional changes will enable businesses and entrepreneurs to better succeed? This survey course provides students the opportunity to engage in the critical analysis of these and other questions that lie at the foundation of social impact and responsibility as an area of study. The course involves case studies, conceptual issues, and talks by practitioners. The course is designed to help students develop a framework to address the question: How should business enterprises and business thinking be engaged to improve society in areas not always associated with business? The course is required for the secondary concentration in Social Impact and Responsibility

This new collaborative course -- co-taught by faculty from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Weitzman School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Science -- uses societal grand challenges as scenarios for identifying repeatable, process-oriented best practices for solving complex, systemic problems in the energy transition. This course is intended for graduate students with a background in either the social sciences (economics, political science, law, or policy) or who are in STEM programs (science and engineering). This course will complement the material covered in the Kleinman Center Introduction to Energy Policy course (ENMG 5020) taught in the fall. It will be an opportunity to learn from one another and build a holistic understanding of the technical and policy dimensions of the energy transition and the global response to climate change and environmental degradation. The course will be broken into three chapters. For the first third of the semester, we will focus on basics of policy and engineering literacy, with each student bringing their own expertise to the table. The best way to truly understand a topic is to teach it, and this chapter of the course will focus on learning how to talk across disciplines and approach challenges in new and unfamiliar ways. The middle third of this course will be built around case studies of grand societal challenges; some of which have seen considerable progress towards being solved, others which are still the subject of great uncertainty and disagreement. Among other topics, this course will explore: The impact of sweeping standards on building and appliance efficiency; the rapid development and mutual reinforcement of renewable energy technologies and policy; the ability of policy to facilitate healthy competition between technologies (hydrogen vs batteries, for example); The allocation of scarce CCUS resources to abate difficult to decarbonize products like cement, steel, and plastics; the importance of grid regulation and market design in ensuring future energy reliability and affordability; and the need for transition-ready environmental policies that protect ecosystems and communities without hindering access to critical resources (metals, minerals, land, etc.) The final third of the semester will be structured largely around group projects for which students with diverse expertise will work together to identify a grand societal challenge and isolate the technical and policy barriers to solving this challenge. These groups will give regular updates to the rest of the class and will work towards making a meaningful contribution to solving their challenge through collaborative problem solving, design, and research. This course will deliver content learning outcomes about technical, societal, and policy aspects of focal grand challenges, while providing all participants (including instructors) experience and skills to address community-derived problems in teams composed of members from disciplines that rarely collaborate. Over time, this course will serve as a working, iterative “laboratory” on parameters that affect the success of convergence style research and problem solving.

Soil is considered the "skin of the Earth", with interfaces between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. It is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids and a myriad of organisms that can support plant life. As such, soil is a natural body that exists as part of the environment. This course will examine the nature, properties, formation and environmental functions of soil.

These seminars explore ideas related to Historic Preservation & Landscape Architecture. It is open to all interested Weitzman students and is cross-listed with HSPV & LARP. Topics vary between semesters, and specific details can be found in the “Section Details” area in course search as well as online.

We are living in the midst of one of the most severe crises in the Earth's history. Science confirms the glaciers are melting, hurricanes are growing more intense, and the oceans are rising. But there is also a deeply spiritual dimension to global warming that does not factor into the scientific explanations of the Anthropocene. "Spirituality" will be defined not in terms of one particular religion, but in relationship to a passionate study of the environment and nature. Readings will include materials from both the sciences and the humanities such as Donella Meadows's Thinking in Systems, Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, and films such as Black Fish and Wale Rider. The theoretical focus of the course will be how "multispecies partnerships" can help us better understand and mitigate the effects of Climate Change. This class will work collaboratively on a digital archive with an interactive mapping interface designed in Scalar. This newly developed platform allows for the creation of multimedia exhibits that will document how Global Warming is affecting coral reefs in the tropics, glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, rainforests in the Amazon and rivers of Philadelphia. Students will also work individually to design interactive maps on the Scalar platform documenting their own more personal interactions with the environment.

This seminar explores how the humanities can contribute to discussions of sustainability. We begin by investigating the contested term itself, paying close attention to critics and activists who deplore the very idea that we should try to sustain our, in their eyes, dystopian present, one marked by environmental catastrophe as well as by an assault on the educational ideals long embodied in the humanities. We then turn to classic humanist texts on utopia, beginning with More's fictive island of 1517. The "origins of environmentalism" lie in such depictions of island edens (Richard Grove), and our course proceeds to analyze classic utopian tests from American, English, and German literatures. Readings extend to utopian visions from Europe and America of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as literary and visual texts that deal with contemporary nuclear and flood catastrophes. Authors include: Bill McKibben, Jill Kerr Conway, Christopher Newfield, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Karl Marx, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Owens, William Morris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ayn Rand, Christa Wolf, and others.

Environmental sustainability issues are one of the defining problems of our time. While governments and NGOs will have to play important roles, without active involvement of businesses it will be impossible to make sufficient progress on these issues. Globalization and Digitization have been two major disruptive developments that organizations have faced (and are still facing). ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues are the latest large-scale development that will shape companies’ futures. This course will focus on the “E” of ESG. As with any large change, environmental sustainability poses significant business challenges but also tremendous opportunities. We will study these issues both from the perspective of incumbent firms that have to adapt their business practices and from firms (incumbents and new start-ups) that will take advantage of the new opportunities that are being created.

This course will focus on how food is produced around the globe and inputs required to ensure food security. Topics explored include: Integrated Pest Management, Precision Agriculture, Product Stewardship, Biodiversity, Biologicals, Organics and Synthetic Products, GMOs, Sustainable Development Goals, Regulations, Stakeholders (Growers, NGOs, consumers, etc.), and Food waste.

This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts.

This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts.

The evaluation of technical, social, and economic constraints on the implementation of water supply and sanitation projects. The development of sustainable technical solutions that fit within the appropriate social context. Discussion draws insight from successful small rural community system approaches to inform practical larger regional and watershed approaches in the US and internationally. Case studies are used to demonstrate these principles across a range of examples from developed and developing countries including detailed studies from rural communities with limited financial resources.

Sustainable Landscapes

This course is designed to introduce students to the multiple methods of engaging Africana entrepreneurship, public service and philanthropy. Alongside a thorough review of both popular and independent activist media, students will be trained to use accessible technology to participate in international communications networks. "Big ideas," will be translated into succinct artistic statements. We will look intimately at the architecture of David Adjaye, Adjaye Associates; the initiatives of Majora Carter for Sustainable South Bronx and Majora Carter Group; the philanthropic equity of Vista Equity Partners and C.E.O. Robert Smith, and the political work of Mayor Ras Baraka, City of Newark among other examples from the public and private sector throughout the African Diaspora. Prior to the development of our own app ideas, we will focus on the urban market advertising strategies of majority companies that are lauded for their sustainable initiatives including Nike, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. We will also use as secondary resources macro approaches to sustainability from the United Nations Foundation. This course makes an argument for inclusion of race, class and gender equity in the evolving definition of sustainability. Our argument, consistent with the growth of so many of these professionals inside of and clearly influenced by hip-hop culture, is that they are best prepared, culturally, to "make something out of nothing."

Neutral during WWII, and claiming a "Middle Way" between east and west in the post-war twentieth century, Sweden - its people, institutions, and culture - has left its mark on our global society. In today's world, the influence of Swedish ideas and innovations can be seen in government structures, health and social policies, business organizations, working life, education, science, art, literature, and, of course, the design and style of many products and services which enjoy high demand. These are impressive impacts from a nation-state of only eight million people. What lessons are there for Americans and our institutions as we enter the twenty-first century where our leadership position, ability to determine the rules and control the agenda of world economic and political affairs are diminished? In this course, we focus on "the people philosophy" of Sweden, its government, businesses and organizations. We cover healthcare issues and policy, sustainable development, the European Community and the human relations issues in organizations. This course will include meetings with academics and leaders from industry, government, health care, science, media, arts and culture. Students will meet with and learn from these representatives in order to explore Swedish organizational dynamics, both in terms of its economic prosperity and the problems Swedish society faces today.

What makes an economy grow? This question has been asked – and answered – many times over in the modern era. From Adam Smith’s classic Wealth of Nations (1776) to today’s political leaders, many have debated the ingredients necessary for a nation to prosper, or policies to promote growth. Some point to the need for fiscal responsibility, others an educated labor force, or to tariffs, natural resources, and the right laws. This seminar explores the deep history of this problem of economic growth. Students will read works by economists, social scientists, and historians that present different theories for why some nations develop faster than others. With case studies from across the globe, we will tackle topics like why Europe industrialized first, or the paradox of why the abundance of natural resources does not necessarily contribute to long-lasting economic development. This course also asks students to think critically about the metrics used to measure “success” and “failure” across nations, as well as how such comparisons between societies have been mobilized to legitimize imperial expansion, human exploitation, environmental destruction, or political repression. By discussing how governments, corporate interests, and individual actors have implemented strategies to increase national wealth, students will also be asked to grapple with some of the consequences of economic growth for the environment, human welfare, and social inequality. *Students may fulfill one geographic requirement for the History major or minor with this course. The specific requirement fulfilled will be determined by the topic of the research paper.