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The Connecting Early Childhood Development to Climate Change report offers practical guidance for advocates, researchers, organizers, and other communicators who can help shape conversations about climate change and child development.
FrameWorks Institute
Connecting Early Childhood Development to Climate Change
Oct 21, 2025
Summary
Climate change is typically framed as a future problem, but it’s already reshaping the environments where children live, grow, play, and learn. Despite that reality, public attention is rarely focused on how climate change affects children’s development—or what we can do about it.
This report, produced in partnership with the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University and Harvard Chan C-CHANGE, offers practical guidance for advocates, researchers, organizers, and other communicators who can help shape conversations about climate change and child development. It includes:
- An examination of how people currently think about these issues
- An analysis of communication challenges
- Recommendations for framing messages to build public understanding of the impacts of climate change on early childhood development
For a summary of the key findings and a snapshot of the recommendations, check out the companion brief to this report: Five Trends in Public Thinking about the Connections between Early Childhood Development and Climate Change.
View the full report at www.frameworksinstitute.org/
Connecting Early Childhood Development to Climate Change was originally published by the FrameWorks Institute.
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Conservative attacks on higher education and DEI reveal a deeper fear of diversity—and the racial roots of America’s “ivory tower.”
Getty Images, izusek
The Ivory Tower is a Persisting Legacy of White Supremacy
Oct 20, 2025
The Trump administration and conservative politicians have launched a broad-reaching and effective campaign against higher education and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts in particular. These attacks, often amplified by neo-conservative influencers, are not simply critiques of policy or spending. At their core, they reflect anxiety over the growing presence and visibility of marginalized students and scholars within institutions that were not historically designed for them.
The phrase ivory tower has become shorthand for everything critics dislike about higher education. It evokes images of professors lost in abstract theorizing, and administrators detached from real-world problems. But there is a deeper meaning, one rooted in the racial history of academia. Whether consciously or not, the term reinforces the idea that universities are–and should remain–spaces that uphold whiteness.
When critics lament the state of the ivory tower, they are often reacting not just to elitism, but to the changing demographics and priorities of colleges and universities. As enrollment by students of color and women have been making gains and new areas of study have emerged and gained traction–from ethnic studies to gender studies to critical race theory–we’ve seen a corresponding backlash: funding cuts, attacks on DEI, and growing calls to limit what can be taught.
The roots of exclusion in higher education run deep. The nation’s first colleges—Harvard, Yale, Princeton—were created for the sons of wealthy white elites. They were built, in part, by sweat generated through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Higher education institutions were also constructed on land stolen from indigenous peoples, and for centuries, those in power within the ivory towers systematically excluded Black, indigenous, and other marginalized groups. Even today, that legacy persists.
Across the country, students from low-income families still struggle to access and complete college. The graduation gap between students from the lowest and highest income groups remains stark, and public universities face increasing pressure to cut programs that serve students pursuing social justice and public service careers.
“Ivory” has long been a symbol of purity and exclusivity–its colonial history tied to European extraction from Africa. When applied to the university, the metaphor suggests not only elitism but also racial exclusivity. In that light, the “ivory tower” becomes not just a metaphor for detachment but for a structure built to elevate whiteness.
As sociologists, we see how these dynamics play out. Black intellectuals are more likely to have their work dismissed as "activism." Women scholars are scrutinized more harshly when they challenge dominant paradigms. Indigenous knowledge systems are often viewed as less rigorous than Western models. And public attacks tend to target the very disciplines—African American studies, feminist theory, sociology—that question existing power structures.
When critics call for the dismantling of the ivory tower, we should ask: Which parts of the university do they want to dismantle, and which do they want to preserve? Who benefits from these changes?
Universities were built as sites of exclusion, designed to reinforce class, gender and racial hierarchies, and have long operated as gatekeeping institutions. And, perhaps these unsustainable features of our history are the very reasons they are vulnerable now. If universities had made themselves accessible to all decades ago, perhaps Americans would not have elected those who seek to destroy them now. If we are going to critique higher education, we must do so honestly.
Higher education is not without its problems. Tuition is rising, student debt is crushing, and too many students are taught by underpaid adjuncts. But the answer isn’t to reject higher education altogether. The answer is to transform it.
We need universities that are accessible, equitable, and publicly supported. We need institutions that recognize the value of diverse disciplines and diverse people. And we need to stop pretending that critiques of the "ivory tower" are always neutral. Too often, they mask a desire to return universities to a time when fewer voices were heard and fewer people had access.
If we are truly committed to equity in education, then we must be honest about the words we use and the histories they reflect. It’s time to reconsider the ivory tower–both as a metaphor and as a model for our institutions.
Yolanda Wiggins is an assistant professor of sociology at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project.
Megan Thiele Strong is a professor of sociology at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at the The OpEd Project and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.Keep ReadingShow less
As the COP 30 nears, Indigenous-led conservation offers the best hope to protect the Amazon rainforest and stabilize the global climate system.
Getty Images, photography by Ulrich Hollmann
The Critical Value of Indigenous Climate Stewardship
Oct 20, 2025
In August, I traveled by bus, small plane, and canoe to the sacred headwaters of the Amazon, in Ecuador. It’s a place with very few roads, yet like many areas in the rainforest, foreign business interests have made contact with its peoples and in just the last decade have rapidly changed the landscape, scarring it with mines or clearcutting for cattle ranching.
The Amazon Rainforest is rightly called the “lungs of the planet.” It stores approximately 56.8 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to nearly twice the world’s yearly carbon emissions. With more than 2,500 tree species that account for roughly one-third of all tropical trees on earth, the Amazon stores the equivalent to 10–15 years of all global fossil fuel emissions. The "flying rivers" generated by the forest affect precipitation patterns in the United States, as well our food supply chains, and scientists are warning that in the face of accelerating climate change, deforestation, drought, and fire, the Amazon stands at a perilous tipping point.
As world leaders prepare to meet this November at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, known as COP 30, in Belém, Brazil, the future of the Amazon—and the climate system that depends on it—hangs in the balance.
On the plus side, there is growing interest among U.S. investors and foundations in projects that will lead to regrowth of the rainforest. But too often, when companies enter the carbon sequestration market, profits flow back to them almost exclusively. I have been working with foundations for more than a decade and have observed firsthand how more and more investors want to see their dollars benefit the community as well as the planet. For example, I coordinated Divest Invest Philanthropy, a coalition of some 170 foundations representing more than $50 billion in assets that are being shifted away from fossil fuels and into impact solutions.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, for another example, a new, indigenous led project will reforest 10,000 acres as it seeds vanilla and other crops in the understory. This regenerative model—in which funding supports community priorities, livelihoods, and leadership—offers a more just and sustainable pathway forward.
At pre-COP meetings such as last month's Climate Week in New York, coalitions such as the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, which is leading the restoration project in Ecuador, will be engaging government and business leaders to support the concept of buen vivir, or living well in harmony with nature. The alliance represents 30 Indigenous organizations across Peru and Ecuador that are working to make a 35-million acre region off-limits to industrial-scale resource extraction, advance legal recognition of Indigenous territories, restore degraded forests, and build a regenerative bioeconomy.
But COP meetings are famously siloed: government leaders, business leaders, and grassroots groups each often have separate meetings and produce their own declarations. To achieve durable climate solutions, we must build stronger bridges between these spheres—ensuring that the lived wisdom and priorities of frontline communities inform and shape global policy frameworks. A great example of this is the inspiring work of the Pachamama Alliance, which has been engaged in deep trust building work between philanthropists, investors and community leaders for 30 years. (I have Pachamama Alliance to thank for leading the journey I participated in in Ecuador).
Global carbon markets are expanding rapidly, but their legitimacy and effectiveness will depend on designing mechanisms that are rooted in Indigenous governance and that deliver real, measurable benefits back to communities.
That dual purpose is essential. At the Ecuadorian headwaters, the Achuar, Shuar and Sapara communities engaged in deals that have led to much deforestation of their land. Many local leaders would like to restore the rainforest and generate sustainable economic opportunities. Carbon credits, crops such as vanilla, and ecotourism offer alternatives.
Research consistently shows that forests managed by Indigenous peoples experience far lower rates of deforestation and degradation. The ecological knowledge and cultural values Indigenous communities bring are essential tools for combating climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet these communities face mounting threats: illegal logging, mining, land grabs, violence, and the growing impacts of a warming planet.
COP 30 will be held in the very heart of the Amazon, and global leaders face both a pivotal opportunity and a profound responsibility. It is time to place Indigenous rights and leadership at the forefront of climate action. This means recognizing Indigenous peoples as equal partners in designing and implementing both policy and investment strategies–not just including indigenous people at the table but also investing in their vision. It means providing them with the legal protections, financial resources, and political support necessary to safeguard their lands and livelihoods while ensuring that new economic opportunities are structured to strengthen, rather than erode, community resilience.
The climate crisis demands urgent and systemic change. Protecting the Amazon through Indigenous stewardship is one of the clearest, most effective solutions available.
Jenna Nicholas is an investor, entrepreneur, advisor, a PD Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
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U.S. President Donald Trump (2R) is welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) at Ben Gurion International Airport on October 13, 2025 in Tel Aviv, Israel. President Trump is visiting the country hours after Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023, part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza.
Getty Imges, Chip Somodevilla
The Ceasefire That Shattered a Myth
Oct 20, 2025
And then suddenly, there was a ceasefire — as if by divine miracle!
Was the ceasefire declared because Israel had finally accomplished its declared goals?
No.
Was it because Israel was on its knees and could no longer go on with the war?
No.
We have a ceasefire because the United States of America decided that it was time for one. Period.
The next question to ask then is this: If so, then could we have had a ceasefire say six months ago, or a year ago, or even two years ago?
The answer is an emphatic – yes!
We could have had a ceasefire because the U.S. could have declared that it wanted it at any point in time. This is now obvious. But it didn’t until a few days ago.
The New York Times reported on October 9, 2025, that the Trump administration had brokered a “momentous breakthrough” between Israel and Hamas: A 72-hour ceasefire, hostage exchanges, and partial troop withdrawals. Within a day of Washington’s green light, Netanyahu’s cabinet convened, approved the order, and is from all indications halting the bombing. No divine intervention, no complex diplomatic ballet — just an abrupt shift in Washington’s calculus.
In short: The genocide stopped because the U.S. willed it to stop.
So then what is one to make of the widely held notion that the United States government has been helplessly dragged along for the last two years – and in fact, for decades – by an obstinate, ruthless, greedy, ingrate ally, hostage to an all powerful lobby that grips the U.S. government with an iron fist?
As the past two years have shown, the notion of a United States held hostage by Israel is a convenient and useful stubborn myth. The United States has not – and has never – been reluctantly following Israel: It has been directing it, always and all along.
Let’s examine the basic glaring facts: From the onset of the war in October 2023 to this latest ceasefire, American support of Israel’s daily slaughter of the trapped and caged Gazans has been the sine qua non enabling constant of this genocide. Weapons, logistics, and diplomatic cover have flowed with machine-like precision, under both Biden and Trump – even as the whole world, morally shocked, rose up in sustained outrage, even after a warrant for the arrest of the Prime Minister of Israel was issued by the International Criminal Court. Even famine has been policy, it seems, not an accident — enforced starvation signed off by bureaucrats in Washington.
But this pattern – Israel appearing to be doing as it pleases, a tail seeming to be wagging a big dog, until the dog decides that the wagging needs to stop – is not new.
When President George H. W. Bush confronted Yitzhak Shamir in 1991 over settlement construction and threatened to withhold $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, the Israeli government blinked. The White House, in the middle of assembling a coalition for the Gulf War, demanded a halt to settlement expansion and pressed for the Madrid Peace Conference. Israel complied. The American press framed it as a “rare show of backbone” against the Israel lobby. But in truth, it was another reminder of who holds the leash: Washington could squeeze at will, and Israel could only yield.
The pattern repeated two decades later. In November 2012, during Israel’s eight-day assault on Gaza (“Operation Pillar of Defense”), President Barack Obama personally called Netanyahu and demanded that he accept an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. Netanyahu initially resisted, wanting to continue the operation. But after Obama’s insistence — reinforced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emergency shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Cairo — Israel halted its bombardment within hours. The timing wasn’t moral; it was strategic. Washington wanted calm before the Thanksgiving news cycle and to protect Egypt’s newly installed Morsi government. Israel obeyed. Once again, when the U.S. said stop, it stopped.
Even Obama’s later “tensions” with Netanyahu followed the same script. His brief standoff over settlement freezes, culminating in the 2011 Oval Office dressing-down, was portrayed as proof that the Israeli prime minister could defy a U.S. president and get away with it. Yet by the end of Obama’s term, U.S. military aid had reached record levels, including a $38 billion package — the largest in history. Even in moments of public friction, the underlying hierarchy remained untouched: Israel’s defiance was theater; the dependency was structural.
When one traces the pattern — the timing of truces before G20 summits, escalations before U.N. votes, sudden humanitarian “surges” when cameras are rolling — it becomes clear that Israeli military tempo bends around American diplomatic needs. When Washington needs calm, Israel delivers it. When it needs pressure, the bombs resume. The much-publicized quarrels between Netanyahu and successive U.S. presidents are political pantomime, useful for both sides: Israel plays the defiant underdog; Washington plays the reluctant enabler. Both roles sustain the same imperial arrangement.
Clinging to the “Israel-controls-Washington” narrative has not only become empirically untenable, it also traps advocates for Palestinian rights in a moral cul-de-sac. It transforms Israel into a mythic omnipotent actor while absolving Americans of responsibility. Worse, it exposes critics to accusations of antisemitism (shadowy Jewish control) and disempowers movements that might otherwise target the true seat of policy: The Pentagon, the State Department, and the vast military-industrial bureaucracy that profits from endless war.
Reframing the picture heliocentrically, so to speak — with the United States at the center — reveals Israel not as the master but as a satellite. It acts with aggression, yes, but aggression licensed, funded, and shielded by Washington. Every bomb dropped over Gaza has a congressional signature behind it. Every blockade is underwritten by American taxpayers. Every “rogue” act fits within a strategic perimeter drawn in Virginia and Tampa.
And yet, there is indeed one tail that is wagging a very large dog.
But it’s not Israel wagging America. It’s the tail of the U.S. defense industry, intelligence bureaucracy, and revolving-door officials wagging the American people.
The public, overwhelmingly opposed to war and genocide, is told that their outrage should be directed at a foreign capital rather than at the one that authorizes the planes, the fuel, the billions of dollars – and the silence.
When Washington decided to stop the slaughter, the killing stopped. The simple physics of power could not be clearer. The question that must be asked now is not whether Israel will obey the next order, but whether the American people will finally recognize where the orders originate and why those orders defy, time and again, the basic, declared will of the people.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.
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