Destiny Magnett, MTS '24: Climate Justice Week Transcript

Beginning with the first question, I think the student presenters in the Climate Justice as Racial Justice panel really helped me to frame the ways in which intersectionality is vital to consider and incorporate across the board in climate activism. I was particularly drawn to the way the presenters included examples of erasure, marginalization, campaign politics, and even the arts as potential topics for and avenues of exploring how climate justice and racialization are deeply related in a variety of political, historical, religious, and social contexts.

Next, moving to the second question, I think that because the students at the Divinity School come from such diverse and multifaceted backgrounds and experiences before they came to HDS, it means that it's an incredible place to talk about intersectionality, especially when it comes to talking about intersectionality in liberatory and justice-oriented contexts and conversations.

People here are interested not only in exploring these kinds of questions through their scholarship or academic and theoretical lenses, though, they really do that, too. But often, I find that folks are interested in centering their work around living spiritual and political experiences on the ground. It really becomes a community of folks interested in creating a better world by building coalitions around how that can look in spaces of scholarship, like Harvard as a university, but also in places of spiritual care and places of deeply engaged activism. And often, they might do this in all of these places at the same time.