About the Initiative
The Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative at Wake Forest University is a Mellon Foundation funded research and pedagogical project that brings together students, scholars, activists, journalists, and public officials in a multi-pronged effort to imagine, design, and develop a humanistic Science and Technology Studies curriculum that places at its center environmental and epistemic justice in critically examine how and in what ways race and regimes of racial knowledge shape and inform our scholarly practices, public policies, and normative concerns.
“The ultimate goal of this initiative is to cultivate a new generation of students and scholars who understand that a complex knowledge of race and processes of racialization are critical to comprehending and responding to our current environmental crisis.”
“All people are entitled to equal environmental protection regardless of race, color, or national origin. Environmental justice is the right to live and work and play in a clean environment.”
– Robert D. Bullard
Environmental Justice Pioneer and Distinguished Professor at Texas Southern University
Institute
Learn more about our signature environmental justice summer institute.
Applications are now open for the Environmental and Epistemic Justice 2026 Journalism Fellowship in London, England. The deadline to apply is February 15, 2026. Click below for more information.
Programs
Learn more about our diverse environmental and epistemic justice programs
People
Learn more about the diverse group of Wake Forest University environmental justice scholars
L A T E S T P U B L I C A T I O N
The Fierce Urgency of Environmental Justice
A REPORT FROM THE WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENTAL AND EPISTEMIC JUSTICE INITIATIVE
The Wake Forest University Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative (EEJI), funded by a major grant from the Mellon Foundation, is a humanities-based response to the environmental
crisis that complements our scientific efforts to create a more just and sustainable world. The initiative is grounded in the recognition that
the environmental crisis we face is also an ethical and epistemological crisis where all knowledges – arts, business, humanities, law, medicine, sciences, and theology – are needed to effectively respond to this planetary challenge. It is not enough to “follow the science,” for we need all disciplinary knowledges as well as open spaces for other “local knowledges” to form possible solutions to how we understand the human, how we organize society, and how we imagine our
obligations to one another and to the planet.
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
News
Wake Forest University to host 2026 Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative Summer Institute in London
May 20, 2026
Wake Forest University Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative (EEJI) will host its fourth annual Summer Institute in London from May 31 through June 4, 2026. Supported by a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the institute is designed to support environmental justice reporting and advance public understanding of environmental justice issues.
The Data Center That Didn’t Exist
May 12, 2026
Nondisclosure agreements kept a $27 million land sale in Person County secret for months. Internal emails show county officials were preparing for a Microsoft data center well before informing the people who’d live beside it.
Rochester’s Inner Loop Meets Its End
December 18, 2025
The city looks to revitalize its core by filling in the highway that destroyed it
A homecoming awaits
December 12, 2025
The Muscogee Nation, sometimes called the Muscogee Creek Nation, may soon become the first Indigenous nation invited back to co-steward the land it once called home, before being forcibly removed nearly two centuries ago.
Follow us on social media | @WFUEEJI
TODAY! Join @WFUEEJI for a film screening and conversation on “Our Movement Starts Here” at 5pm and a book talk and conversation with Katie Worth at 7pm in Pugh Auditorium in the Benson University Center on the campus of @WakeForest.
CRITICAL! EPA Weighs N.C. Environmental Harms From Sewage Sludge Used as Fertilizer by @lisasorg |
EPA Weighs N.C. Environmental Harms From Sewage Sludge Used as Fertilizer – Inside Climate News
“Off spec” liquid from Winston Weaver fertilizer fire that was applied on a nearby farm field contained toxic PFAS.
insideclimatenews.org
Remember when the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant full of ammonium nitrate caught on fire? Well, the company sent the fire suppressant water to a dairy farm, where it was applied as fertilizer. And it contained #PFAS. Story @insideclimate tmrw. @WinstonWatchman @JournalNow
Also cut from the #ncga budget: @ncdeq’s Environmental Justice Initiative, 3 positions. Also kaput: Environmental Education. Meanwhile the Env Mgmt Commission gets its own staff. #ncpol
#EJVictory! Last week St. James Parish residents scored a key legal victory in #CancerAlley.
Learn more:
Lawsuit Alleging Environmental Racism in Louisiana Parish Allowed to Proceed, Federal Court Says
A federal appellate court says a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use …
www.usnews.com
JOIN @WFUEEJI this Thursday, April 17, 2025 for a film screening at 5pm and book talk at 7pm in Pugh Auditorium at @WakeForest.
