Biden School Seminar: Unlearn Power - Reshaping Our Environmental Agenda

Featuring Lemir Teron, Associate Professor, Dept. of Earth, Environment and Equity, Howard University

Prefaced on the question "What's under the hood?", Lemir Teron, Ph.D., offers vignettes and reflections from his urban forestry, environmental planning, and energy policy research and practice. As climate change denialism has grown in standing and ecological degradation is increasingly institutionalized politically, Teron will make the case for environmental movements to center labor and restorative justice, while elevating community security claims. The talk will call for a rethinking of power, including both energy systems and political structures, to advance ecological health and environmental justice.

Teron is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Environment and Equity at Howard University. He holds a Ph.D. in Energy and Environmental Policy from the University of Delaware and completed a NOAA-funded postdoc at Florida A&M University’s Environmental Cooperative Science Center. His work is committed to advancing public science and environmental justice, with research interests that include environmental health, energy policy, and urban and community forestry.

He has received numerous accolades, including being awarded the 2019 Distinguished Faculty Member for Teaching Excellence Award by the SUNY ESF Undergraduate Student Association, a 2020 Unsung Hero Award at Syracuse University’s 35th Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration and a 2022 Champion of Diversity by the YWCA of Syracuse and Onondaga County (NY).

Teron serves on the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities and served on the NY State Climate Impacts Assessment’s Energy Workgroup. He is a member scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform. He was named a 2022-2023 Nathan Policy Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.