Tag: UNESCO

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“Sustainability” Is the New Black

(This is the sixth entry in our series looking at the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda”. To read previous posts, scroll down, or type “SDGs” in the search bar.)

Like fashionistas taking cues from the Pantone “color of the year,”  most major private institutions now embrace some form of “sustainability,” whether in sports ( “NBA Signs UN’s Sports for Climate Action Framework“); entertainment (“At WarnerMedia, we are committed to integrating sustainability into all aspects of our business, content and culture globally”); health care (“Go green at CVS“); retail (“Costco Wholesale Corporation Sustainability Commitment”); financial services (“Bank of America: Our commitment to environmental sustainability”); or technology (Google has a “single mission — to foster sustainability at scale”).

“Sustainability” is the new black.

In education, we have seen that federal government efforts to measure progress on UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”) and its associated “targets” (including “education for sustainable development” and “global citizenship”) have not been smooth. Nevertheless, the cult of sustainability is alive and well throughout education in the United States. Our first stop is higher education.

“Sustainability” at Top US Universities

To gauge the prominence of sustainability ideology at the university level, a review of the nation’s most prestigious schools is instructive. Of the universities ranked one through ten in the most recent U.S. News & World Report list, all have sustainability offices, goals, curricula, or plans of one sort or another (Princeton; MIT; Harvard; Stanford; Yale; University of Chicago; Johns Hopkins; University of Pennsylvania; CalTech; Duke; Northwestern). For most of these institutions, “sustainability” isn’t simply about recycling, or about reducing the school’s own “carbon footprint;” rather, it’s about both ecology and “equity,” and it concerns the content of both instruction and research. 

For example, MIT’s “Environmental Solutions Initiative” is weaving sustainability and environmental topics into classes required for graduation. Stanford cross-lists courses from its Doerr School of Sustainability within majors such as education, sociology, political science, and within the professional schools; the school says that “[a]cross our activities we are embedding equity, access, and inclusion.” Harvard’s efforts to become “fossil-fuel neutral” take account of “social equity.” Johns Hopkins’ “Office of Sustainability is part of a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Working Group of the Ivy+ Sustainability Consortium [which] follows the guiding principles of Introspection, Anti-racism, Intersectionality, and Amplification.”

Among the top-rated schools, Yale is the most explicit about its efforts to align teaching and research with the UN’s 2030 Agenda and its SDGs:

In 2015, the Yale Office of Sustainability began looking at how teaching and research at Yale aligns with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

[ . . . ]

Key Findings

Research at Yale University covers all of the Sustainable Development Goals
Every department or school has at least one faculty member whose scholarship relates to the SDGs
Yale has high participation in research relating to SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduce Inequality), and SDG 16 (Peace and Justice)

To arrive at this conclusion, Yale prepared a “comprehensive database of over 4,000 faculty members that provides insights into how Yale’s scholarly activities connect to the SDGs, [which] can be referenced, filtered, and used to foster connections and action.” The university’s Office of Sustainability memorialized its methods in a how-to guide, entitled “Assessing Research and Teaching Connections to the SDGs.”

According to the guide, this “comprehensive, up-to-date list of faculty members” excluded only emeritus and visiting faculty. (p. 3) It advises that any school adopting the Yale methods should have its “SDG Review Team . . . regularly track” faculty on their SDG alignment. (p. 7)

Though one would hope Yale values academic freedom, the guide notes (without irony) that “(f)aculty members may or may not appreciate being categorized by SDG.” (p. 9) The authors offer advice on how to avoid ruffling faculty feathers:

√ Tip: language matters! Avoid saying that their teaching or research “support” or “advance” an SDG. Use less direct terms like “connect to.”

The report notes proudly (p. 12) that 

Yale was also the lead author on the 2019 International Alliance of Research Universities online publication, Global Priorities, Educated Solutions: The Role of Academia in Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals and led half-day program of the same name in June 2019[.] 

That publication notes that the SDG “mapping” of faculty of the kind done by Yale “is not an absolute or prescriptive process” but “can be a fruitful conversation starter” for those academics who don’t view their work in SDG terms.  (p. 13.)

But perhaps no US institute of higher education promotes the SDGs as thoroughly and as publicly as Carnegie Mellon University.

Carnegie Mellon: SDG-U 

In 2021, Carnegie Mellon University (#22 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings) performed a (second!) full-scale “Voluntary University Review [“VUR“] of the Sustainable Development Goals”, looking at CMU’s “efforts to align [its] education, research and practice with the . . . SDGs” (p. 5). In fact, according to the report, CMU was the first university in the world to engage in such a review. (p. 9)

In 2020, CMU had engaged in a “17 Rooms” exercise, an initiative pioneered by the Brookings Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation to brainstorm ways for the school to support the SDGs (pp. 6, 12). That year, it released its first VUR, and the University Provost “participated in the UN Foundation and Brookings Institution’s side event at the United Nations General Assembly on ‘American Leadership on the SDGs.'” (p. 12) (Brookings and the UN Foundation are the “Force Multipliers” featured in Part Two of our series on the 2030 Agenda.) According to the VUR (p. 9; emphasis added),

While the SDGs include environmental stewardship challenges, they represent a paradigm shift in how the world thinks about sustainability that encompasses reducing inequality; creating peaceful, just and inclusive communities; reducing poverty and more.

CMU’s promotion of the SDGs includes:

        • Incorporating SDG information into fall 2021 student orientation (p. 11)
        • “Mapping” all classes “to all relevant SDGs” (p. 13)
        • Coding the “academic and research activities of faculty members” in an electronic profile that can be used to compare these activities to the SDGs (pp. 13-14)
        • Tasking undergraduates in a class on data analytics and research to “develop an automated approach to analyzing courses using the SDGs”, and offering data tools so the CMU community can “search 14,351 courses from fall 2019 to fall 2021 to see how they relate to the SDGs and make SDG-informed decisions about their courses.” (p. 16)
        • Highlighting “Early Adopters” among the faculty who identify where their work aligns with various SDGs (pp. 18-19)
        • Reaching out to student organizations to “educate [them] about the SDGs and encourage them to engage in the Sustainability Initiative” (p. 21)

Indeed, CMU professor Sarah Mendelson was one of three witnesses to testify at Congress’s “first ever” SDGs hearing on September 15, 2022 (see Part Two).

One could say Yale and Carnegie Mellon are definitely operating within the same “sustainability paradigm.”

From “Mapping” to the SDGs to “Conforming” to the SDGs?

Imagine you are a faculty member (at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, or any university following in their footsteps) whose courses and research projects don’t “map” well against the SDGs. What “actions” would your employer take? How would the “map” be used as a “conversation starter”?

“Mapping” research and course offerings against the SDGs – then making the results public in an “electronic profile” of faculty members – can only have one effect: to restrict future classes and research projects to those that fit the “sustainability” mold. In fact, that is exactly what UNESCO is urging universities to do in a recently-published report on “transforming higher education”:

The report calls on higher education leaders and actors to push for transformations within their institutions, using the report’s recommendations to critically reflect and act on their role for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Higher education institutions must take on a stronger role to tackle the world’s most pressing issues.

Knowledge-Driven Actions: Transforming higher education for global sustainability (from the “Short Summary”). Universities are to “reflect[] on what kinds of knowledge are necessary, [and] whose knowledge is needed” (Foreword by Stefania Giannini); to explicitly incorporate the SDGs into the classroom; and to allow the SDGs to shape research (pp. 82-83). Nevertheless, UNESCO disclaims any intention to restrict academic freedom:

The recommendations of this Global Independent Expert Group are not intended as a counterpoint to the ideals of curiosity-driven, basic research and academic freedom. Rather, HEIs [Higher Education Institutions] should wherever possible facilitate and engage in activities that promote the SDGs. In fact, we argue that it is those very HEIs as free institutions that have the motivation to lead societal change wherever needed to achieve the SDGs.

(p. 77) Perhaps UNESCO doth protest too much.

For an in-depth examination of the threat the “sustainability” paradigm poses to academic freedom in higher education (with a look at the paradigm’s Marxist underpinnings, as revealed in this UNESCO document), listen to Dr. James Lindsay’s New Discourses Podcasts on “The Strange Death of the University” Parts One and Two.

• • •

Although the US isn’t a member of UNESCO, the United Nations sub-agency primarily tasked with promoting the UN’s education agenda, the UN is not idle when it comes to promoting its vision for education in America. Our next look will examine efforts by the UN and others to promote the SDGs in K-12 education.

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United Nations 2030 Agenda (Part Four): SDG 4.7 — “Transforming” Education . . . and the World

The modus operandi of the United Nations is to present an impossible-to-criticize wish-list, then to act as though the impossible were somehow achievable (such as SDG 1, “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”; contra Mt. 26:11, “you always have the poor with you”). The devil, as they say, is in the details.

By their very impossibility (“Eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development“), and the fact that, like numbers counting up to infinity, there is no end to the project, the goals run cover for a radical plan to restructure our institutions, in particular, and our culture, more broadly.

This is clearly visible in the realm of education. The closer one looks, the more obvious it becomes that “sustainability” functions as a comprehensive worldview – stated otherwise, as a religion – and that the intention is to use schools as one of the primary vehicles to remake all of society. However, as we shall also see, for the master planners, the United States is a particularly tough nut to crack.

• • •

[Sustainable Development] Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Could anyone possibly object to improving lives through education? Or to the idea that you’re never too old or too young to learn? (Set aside for the time being what concepts might be buried within the terms “inclusive,” “equitable,” and “lifelong learning.”) The overall aspirations appear anodyne; the hidden agenda appears within the “targets” that support this “goal.”

While the bulk of the SDG 4 targets call for expanded educational, all-ages access to “quality” education in broadened, “equitable” ways, Target 4.7 just sounds . . . different:  

 

4.7. “By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development“

https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda (emphasis added). 

The language of this “target” raises many questions:

  • What are “the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development” (which sounds like activism in the classroom)?
  • What is “education for sustainable development”?
  • What is meant by a “sustainable lifestyle”?
  • What is “global citizenship”?
  • How does the UN propose to shape students to in turn shape “culture [to contribute] to sustainable development”?

If “sustainability” is starting to sound suspiciously like a secular religion, and “global citizenship” sounds like a call for one-world government, there is a reason. The roots of these concepts run deep at the UN.

Brave UNESCO World

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the UN infrastructure designed to promote its more “soft power” means of attaining heaven-on-earth. It  was created in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of World War II to “bring people together and strengthen the intellectual and moral solidarity of humankind, through mutual understanding and dialogue between cultures.” Its “clear vision” is that “to achieve lasting peace, economic and political agreements among States are not enough.” https://www.unesco.org/en/history 

Some families have an outsized impact on world affairs. In the Twentieth Century, the Huxleys of Britain were such a family. Physiologist Andrew Huxley won the 1963 Nobel Prize in medicine.  Writer and philosopher Aldous, in 1932, had published Brave New World, one of the two premier English-language dystopian novels of the twentieth century (along with George Orwell’s 1984). And, most importantly for our purposes, in the years between those singular accomplishments by his brothers, Julian Huxley became the first Director-General of UNESCO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxley_family

In 1946 in a pamphlet called  UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Julian Huxley called on UNESCO to “stimulate the quest . . . for a world philosophy, a unified and unifying background of thought for the modern world.” [p. 41; emphasis added] In fact, Huxley had long advocated for a one-world, secular religion of “evolutionary humanism”.

Thus, the new Director-General sought “a single common pool of experience, awareness, and purpose” for humanity. [p. 17] He believed that such a “united . . . tradition” was the key to mankind’s progress and “that the best and only certain way of securing this will be through political unification.” [p. 13; emphasis added] Therefore, the seeds of a new, secular religion – given form in our time as “sustainability” – and of the push toward “global [as opposed to national] citizenship” were sown at UNESCO from its inception.

This “utopian world-scale political ideal,” though its popularity has waxed and waned since the publication of Huxley’s pamphlet, appears alive and well in Agenda 2030, and in particular in UNESCO’s “Education 2030 Framework for Action,” an initiative to shepherd the implementation of SDG 4. Nevertheless, while the central planners have a grand vision for all our lives (and, judging by their written output, appear to get paid by the word), they can’t always get what they want.

• • •

We Will Get It Right “This Time”

SDG 4 is far from the UN’s only recent education master plan. Before that, there were the education prongs of the MDGs (“Millennium Development Goals”), as well as the EFA (“Education for All”) initiative. Both sets of goals set 2015 as their target completion date, and none was completed on time (though the UN claims the MDGs were responsible for meaningful improvements on numerous anti-poverty metrics in the developing world).

Undaunted, in the Education 2030 Framework for Action, UNESCO member states strode forward “with a sense of urgency” to implement their new, global, and “transformative” plan. Education 2030 Framework, p. 7. Indeed, “[e]very effort must be made to guarantee that this time the goal and targets are achieved.” [p. 22.] Not only that – these goals are even more ambitious than the previous, unrealized goals. In a companion guide to the framework, UNESCO says, 

SDG4 therefore pursues this unfinished education agenda, but also goes beyond. . . . SDG4 continues the EFA focus on quality basic education for all and broadens the agenda further to include concern for equitable access to post-basic education. . . . What is also new to SDG4 is the focus on the relevance of learning outcomes both for the world of work, as well as for citizenship in a global and interconnected world.

Unpacking Sustainable Development Goal 4: Education 2030 Guide, p. 9 (emphasis added). 

The Education 2030 Guide also repeats the definitions used in the overall agenda, and (of course) generates some new acronyms. “Sustainable development” is viewed across “three dimensions – economic, social and environmental”. And the sustainability “agenda” asserts “a universality of principles (human rights),  [and a] universality of reach (focus on equity and inclusion)[.]” [p. 10] As for the acronyms, education for sustainable development is now “ESD.” Global citizenship education is now “GCED”. [p. 14]

SDG 4 Intrudes FAR Beyond Literacy and Numeracy

According to the guide, ESD and GCED can provide people with education that is

relevant, with a focus on both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning. [Via ESD and GCED, “citizens” can acquire the] knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required . . . to lead productive lives[.]

[p. 14, emphasis added.] Linger on that statement for a moment. The UN has its sights set on “transforming” education, from near-cradle to grave, now to include college, university, and vocational training. It also seeks to “transform” the entire global population’s “values and attitudes,” with a focus that includes “non-cognitive aspects of learning” – a.k.a., social-emotional learning, or “SEL.” (We will explore the centrality of SEL to SDG 4 – and to the entirety of the progressive education agenda – in future posts.)

What hubris. 

Whither the United States?

The United States has had an on-again, off-again relationship with UNESCO. At the time of the adoption of the Education 2030 documents, the US was not a voting member. It is currently listed on the UNESCO website as a “Non member.” 

Still, that does not mean that UNESCO cannot promote SDG 4 within the US. After all, the US government in the Obama years “enthusiastically” supported the adoption of Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (as we saw in Part One), and at least a few members of Congress are SDG champions (as we saw in Part Two). So, what does the organization’s advocacy look like in the United States? Have schools, quietly or explicitly, embraced “ESD,” or “GCED?” And has the federal government done anything to implement SDG 4?

Stay tuned.

Agenda 2030 Part One, Part Two, Part Three