June 2026 Newsletter

Dear Members,

With extreme heat, floods, and fires intensifying, the worsening injustices of the climate crisis are being felt around the world. It is getting harder for everyone to pretend that continued fossil fuel expansion and data centre construction are not dangerous and destructive. Acting collectively in global solidarity gives us strength to shape transformative change toward a more healthy, stable and just futures.

Welcome to all the new members! In this newsletter we share news of upcoming Union-wide events and a new international climate and aviation working group.  We also share how the Union provides opportunities for members across the world to get together and collaborate as a global collective, updates on Union advocacy efforts and initiatives from our branches in Ireland and North America.  The newsletter also showcases recent publications, podcasts and useful resources. 

In solidarity ~ The Climate Justice Universities Union Coordinating Team

CJUU Collective Action Town Hall -Thursday 23 July 2026

Calling all members! Join us for an empowering discussion about collective action, organising and how to contribute to strategies and structures within the Climate Justice Universities Union. This Collective Action Town Hall will be facilitated by CJUU's coordinating team co-convenors John Barry and Jennie Stephens. All are welcome. The event will be online at 7pm Irish Time, 2pm EST, 11am Pacific. Please register here.

Join the new International Climate & Aviation Working Group!

The longstanding university #flyingless initiative is coordinating with the Climate Justice Universities Union as a new international working group. See the website (flyingless.org), which has a petition, blog, and frequently asked questions (FAQ). Our approach is strategic not personal. We petition universities to include aviation fully in their annual greenhouse gas inventories and to set goals and measure progress toward reduction. The co-organizers are Joe Nevins <jonevins@vassar.edu> and Parke Wilde <parke.wilde@tufts.edu>. We will have a friendly informal online meeting 13 July (2pm Eastern, 8pm France), please find the Zoom link here. This may lead to more regular quarterly meetings in the future if there is interest.

RSVP is not required to participate but please email us with an informal RSVP so we know who to anticipate. Parke may take this first online meeting from Paris and would be delighted to meet some of you in person if you are in the area that evening 13 July. Currently he is in the middle of a non-flying transportation experiment and sharing it online (Available here on Bluesky). Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

CJUU Virtual Book Club

Following a very engaged and enjoyable discussion of Jathan Sadowski's The Mechanic and the Luddite, we will plan to have a second meeting of the CJUU Book Club on the 1st September. We'll switch to fiction and Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were - a story of a village and a people as they try to face up to the destruction wrought by an American oil company. It may be more confronting that a typical summer read, but perhaps also more rewarding. Register here!

North America

The first CJUU North America Flash Talk took place on Friday June 19th 2026 and addressed how and why we need to resist colonial AI as it unfolds around us globally and locally. Using international examples, Mary Finley-Brook, PhD (University of Richmond) reminds us of the risks of normalizing AI adoption and use. Discussion points will be relevant to classroom teaching, scholarship, campus governance and community engagement. Get access to the recording via the embedded video above, or by accessing the video on Peertube here: https://tubedu.org/w/n7Z2f3DK21Lu77bpoTQYfZ. Mary's slides are also available below:

The next CJUU North America Flash Talk will be on July 17. The topic is on climate-centered faculty learning communities with CSU Chico's Mark Stemen and University of Richmond's Mary Finley-Brook. More details to follow. Register for these monthly flash talks here.

Ireland

Update on the Future of the Irish Research Landscape: A Response to the Research Ireland Work Plan

The Open Letter which began from discussions within the higher education policy working group of the Irish branch of the Climate Justice Universities Union continues to gain broad support.  Please consider signing this Open Letter if you have not already. International support is welcome and quite helpful.  Signatories of the Open Letter now includes over 2,600 people. The letter is also supported by:

• Leading academics and researchers
• Climate Justice Universities Union (CJUU)
• Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT)
• Irish Research Staff Association (IRSA)
• Postgraduate Workers Organisation (PWO)
• The Union of Students in Ireland / Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ)
• Irish Humanities Alliance / Comhaontas Daonnachtaí na hÉireann (IHA) - hosted by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA)
• The Fellows of Trinity College Dublin
• The Centre for Cultures, Academic Values in Education (CAVE) at Trinity College Dublin
• The Green Party
• Concerned members of the public

Additional updates on developments on this campaign will be circulated soon.

CJUU Ireland protests against State led LNG Bill

The Climate Justice Universities Union joined a coalition of activists and campaign groups outside Dáil Éireann - the Irish parliament - to protest against the Irish Government's Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve Bill. This proposed Bill significantly undermines Ireland's Climate Act, paves the way for fossil fuel expansion and places further limits on public participation in this decision-making. Please consider signing this petition to keep Ireland LNG Free and to resist new fossil fuel infrastructure.

CJUU Ireland co-hosted event: Who Owns the Transition? Energy Democracy and the Power of Community and Cooperative Renewables

On the 22nd June, the CJUU and Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI) hosted a research panel exploring the question Who Owns the Transition? CJUU Ireland members Prof. Jennie Stephens, Dr. Emanuela Ferrari and Laurie Reilly were joined by special guest Prof. Julie MacArthur, Canada Research Chair in Reimagining Capitalism, Royal Roads University, to discuss fossil fuel dependence, incumbent power structures and how energy cooperatives and community-owned renewable energy offer transformational opportunities for greater democratic legitimacy, participation, resiliency, and bottom-up public control in the energy transition.

CJUU All-Ireland In-Person Assembly at Trinity College Dublin, December 2026

The next CJUU All-Ireland Assembly will be hosted at Trinity College Dublin in December 2026. This is an opportunity for Ireland-based members of the CJUU to connect in person and discuss how higher education institutions in Ireland can and should respond to our ecological and social crises. This in-person gathering will be held on either the 7th or 8th December. Full details to be confirmed soon!

Podcast series and book: Take a listen to this podcast series A Matter of Degrees and a recent episode that explores the new book 'Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home', by Katharine K. Wilkinson. "Through journaling prompts, practical exercises, wisdom from climate leaders, and even art and song, the book takes readers from climate ache to action and from doubt to possibility." https://www.degreespod.com/episodes/climate-wayfinding

Resource: 'Carbon Captured' by Drilled and Pro-Publica - How the fossil fuel industry turned the plan to solve climate change into a plan to save itself. An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled has found that fossil fuel companies have been funding climate research at prestigious U.S. universities for more than 30 years. Their support has helped amplify the work of scientists who promote the idea that we can stop the climate crisis without breaking our dependence on oil, gas and coal.

Resource: 'Data Boom Geographies', Virginia's Colocation and Buildout by CJUU member Mary Finley-Brook

Resource: The DAIR Institute Zine Library shares a collection of zines focused on on AI and big tech criticism and the collective imagining of alternatives. A zine is a self-published booklet or magazine, usually produced by one person or a small group, often to express creative, subversive, and/or marginalised perspectives, messages and experiences.  

• CJUU coordinator Colm O'Neill created this booklet on Resources for Radical Infrastructures
• CJUU coordinator Clare Kelly contributed to this zine on Creative Communities of Resistance as part of a collaboration between AI-critical university educators in multiple different countries. 

News Articles:

• Irish Times article by CJUU member Patrick Bresnihan: Ironic that data centres are contributing to job cuts in the world's data centre capital
• Irish Times article by CJUU co-convenor Jennie Stephens: Climate justice calls for a fairer, healthier, more stable future. Shift towards climate justice is essential for our collective future.

• Irish Examiner article by CJUU co-convenor Jennie Stephens: Do Women have an AI problem?