Shieva Kleinschmidt

This is an incomplete and informal resource containing suggestions for anticipating, mitigating, and recovering from climate-related professional harms, especially within one's own institution. The focus here is on responding to diversity, equity, and inclusion issues at an individual level for oneself, rather than on advocating for others or pursuing larger changes (though of course, those are related and all are important).

Here are the suggestions I'll cover below:

• Keep Records
• Track Trends
• Recognize Real Effects
• Form Communities
• Ask Your Community for Things That Will Help
• Beware Rip Current Resources
• Set Boundaries
• Have A Happy Place
• Ask Your Institution for Things That Will Help You
• Manage Expectations
• Pick Your Battles
• Aim for Transparency, Equity, and Respect

Keep Records

If something concerning happens, keep a record of it. Even if you don't have anything left from the event itself (e.g., if it's a conversation or the records aren't accessible to you), you can write down what you take to have happened. Save it in a way that time-stamps it (e.g., by sending yourself an email).

When meeting with people who raise climate-related concerns, you can also transparently have a method that involves taking notes (even if those keep your interlocutor anonymous).

You can similarly take your own notes during meetings, rather than depending on the official minutes of those meetings (if such minutes exist).

Keeping track of information is helpful because:

• Maltreatment thrives in secrecy
• It'll help verify claims later
• Having a record of it outside your brain will give you mental space to be able to put aside thinking about it or trying to remember it
• It'll help counteract gaslighting and memory loss; even if you never share what happened with anyone, being able to be sure of what happened to you even in the face of others saying it didn't happen can be helpful

Track Trends

You can track trends reactively (in response to disparities you notice) and also proactively (watching out for disparities even if you don't antecedently have reason to think there are some).

Just some of the things you can track:

• Distribution of goods and work
• Application of rules and policies
• Trends in what departmental members in various groups are reporting
• Trends in how your workplace is impacting you mentally and physically

Delegating out tracking allows for more proactivity. Some options for getting help with tracking:

• A climate committee can help track trends, especially via a regular climate durvey
• A faculty affairs office can provide information needed to track some trends
• You can ask your department for increased transparency, for instance with goods and service distribution
• An EEO office can help with this

Recognize Real Effects

It's easy, when hearing of others' reactions to climate struggles, to think "of course this is having a big impact on you! What you're experiencing is a genuine hardship!" But when confronted with one's own climate struggles, we may instead be like, "wait, why is this impacting me? Why can't I compartmentalize this?" So here I invite us to take a moment to just note, this stuff has real effects, some of them are physical, and many of them measurable.

Some effects, such as anxiety and situational depression, are mental. And some, such as increased sickness and prolonged increases of stress hormones, are physical and can cause further physical effects with prolonged exposure. (I do not intend to draw a hard distinction between the physical and mental here; e.g., anxiety and situational depression can also be characterized as physical and can also have significant other physical effects.) There are also measurable professional consequences. All of this is worth tracking, even if just for your own knowledge. Prolonged exposure to toxic environments is a significant harm, and responding to it as such (rather than trying to merely compartmentalize, or to ignore it, or to push through with "grit") is not only reasonable, it is healthy.

Form Communities

Experiencing climate issues can be isolating. Forming communities (related to climate issues or not) can be helpful. And letting people know what's happening can be helpful - especially with getting advice, and combatting self-blame and gaslighting.

It can be helpful to reach out to:

• Former mentors
• Current colleagues (which may make you feel less alone in your department)
• People in the profession you can talk with about climate stuff
• People in the profession you can low-stakes connect with about work stuff or fun stuff
• People in other disciplines dealing with some of the same work or climate stuff
• Professional resources, such as therapists and academic coaches
• Any kind of support network available to you outside of academia

Ask Your Community for Things That Will Help

When you reach out to communities, consider asking for specific things from them. Often people want to help, but won't realize you're not just coming to them for commiseration or venting. (And sometimes you are just coming to them for commiseration or venting!) Thinking about and then communicating about what things you might find helpful can be beneficial. And if the situation is reversed and you're in the position of someone coming to you with climate-related concerns, asking about tangible courses of action can give them an opening to make requests when they otherwise might not have felt comfortable (or might not have thought of doing so).

Some things I've asked for, or that have been generously offered to me:

• Advice on what to do next about climate issues
• Social hangouts (which increase feelings of belonging and of community)
• Explicitly low-stakes Philosophy interaction
• Exchanging papers (which helps rebuild confidence) or research membership
• Them interacting with stressful people on my behalf, giving me a way to have a boundary and feel protected against some climate-related harms

Beware Rip Current Resources

Resources that you may reach out to, including colleagues, departmental leadership, administration, university leadership, and even resources such as Campus Wellness, the University Ombuds, and the Equity and Equal Opportunities Office, can be potentially helpful. But be aware that reaching out to them can also be immensely draining, and comes with risks.

Gaslighting and silencing, as well as inertia (especially at an institutional level) and swamping (in favor of interests of the already privileged) are super-common. Reaching out to resources, and doing the time-intensive and emotionally costly labor of communicating the things you're dealing with, only to be met with the above kinds of responses, can be discouraging while also draining your already diminished resources.

When caught in a rip current, the typical advice used to be to immediately swim parallel to shore. The idea is that a rip current is trying to drag you out into the ocean, and if you try to swim directly to shore you'll tire yourself out, and this can be fatal. The thought was that by swimming parallel to shore, you'll escape the pull outward and then you'll be able to swim back to shore somewhere outside the current.

However, it turns out for some of the ways rip currents are generated, there's flow not only to shore outward, but also from the sides of the rip current toward it. So, if you try to swim parallel to shore as a way of exiting the current, you'll tire yourself out and make no progress just as you would if you were trying to swim directly back to shore. In these cases (and I have no idea how one tells which kind of rip current they're in) the advice is to stay afloat and let the current take you outward, and then either wait for rescue or eventually swim parallel to shore where there'll be less resistance against it.

The analogy isn't perfect, but my point is simply this: often when we're faced with climate-related issues, we're told to work within the system to push for change (even at the level of just improving our own situations). But sometimes this can tire us out, draining what's left of our resources. We only have so much time, so much energy, and when we invest it in trying to get resources to help us, and then they let us down, this can do further damage to us. My suggestion is not to not try, but rather, that you have some boundaries related to how much time and energy you'll invest in it, and also some plans about what you'll do (and how you'll take care of yourself) if appeals for help from these resources don't work out.

Set Boundaries

As you respond to climate-related challenges you're facing, I recommend setting boundaries. These can be things you communicate, or things you just decide on for yourself.

Here are just a few ways that you might set some boundaries:

• Have others form buffers for you. E.g., if there's someone who, when they communicate with you, causes you climate-related harm, consider asking someone else to take over the communication between you and the harmful person.
• Limit how many hours you spend on the climate-related difficulties, or on the things causing the climate-related difficulties.
• In advocating for change, or trying to reduce climate-related difficulties, there may be a temptation to work and re-work how to communicate to others about it, to make a positive outcome more likely. Be willing to stop before things are perfect; others have a responsibility to make an effort with uptake, and the responsibility of solving all of these issues shouldn't be on your shoulders alone.
• Delegate where you can - e.g., if you form support groups, climate committees, etc., the group may be able to tackle some of the issues.
• Opt out of things that are harmful to you (such as harmful meetings or problematic institutional practices). You have the right to not be put in harmful situations - and if you're wondering whether you really are allowed to opt out of certain kinds of meetings or interactions, check with someone in university leadership.
• Limit who can interact with you, or in what situations (and fall back on policy and procedure). You can also take small steps, such as not checking work-related email in the evenings or on weekends, to give yourself some space.
• Delegate out advocating for you -- though while understanding that others, even those in a position to advocate, are in complicated positions and may have limitations on what they can do that you're not aware of.

Have A Happy Place

This one is simple. Our ability to deal with harms (if we can't escape the harmful situation) is increased if we have some place in our life that is safe and not harmful. So try to identify something - home life, exercise, a broader community, etc - that is a place for you to recover. And, again, to the extent that you can, set boundaries on the harmful climate-related stuff so that it stays out of your happy place.

Ask Your Institution for Things That Will Help You

When reaching out to colleagues or members of communities you're a part of, it might not occur to you to ask for specific things. But when reaching out to university resources (such as university leadership or the EEO), it might occur to you, but they might direct you toward asking for punitive responses. In some cases, this is important as it is the only way to stop some kinds of harms from continuing. But I recommend also (or, if the case doesn't require punitive responses, instead) asking for things that will (i) actively help you, or (ii) at least stop the harms.

With climate-related harms, people often focus more on the perpetrators of the harm. They wonder: What’s motivating them? Is this a bad person? Can I see their point of view? And the debate and response become about that. There are benefits to having those answers, and it's especially important if having those answers is needed in order to stop those committing the harms from continuing to do so. But it's also important to place focus on those harmed. We want things to be better for the people who are suffering. So here are some things to ask for that may improve the situations of the people being harmed.

• Replacement of goods lost
• Compensation for harms suffered
• Funding for conferences/workshops/events that would directly benefit those harmed
• Course releases or helpful teaching assignments
• Regular tracking of patterns, without the people harmed having to manage it
• Explicit, egalitarian policies (which may reduce the likelihood of some kinds of harms continuing)

Manage Expectations

Change is hard and may be unlikely. It often takes a lot of work and even then might not work out. And the resources available for change are often within the university, which creates conflict of interest (even just at the level of inertia), and makes it even more challenging to bring about change.

So, it may help if you see the work you do in pursuing change as valuable in itself, rather than the value being contingent on an outcome. For instance, you may feel that advocating for yourself and others, and pushing back against wrongs you see committed, is important even if it won't bring about change in what's happening. It may also help if you manage your workload, and refrain from investing all of your time and emotional resources into this. (See again: rip current resources, and setting boundaries.)

Pick Your Battles

Choose battles that you think are meaningful to fight regardless of outcome. And don't feel you have to do all you possibly can. You can try, and make a difference, without letting this take everything you've got.

Notes on picking battles:

• Speaking up directly may come with costs for you. Working through intermediaries can help - the DGS, Placement Director, Climate Committee, etc.
• Falling back on concrete, general proposals may also potentially help.
• Advocating for yourself vs. others: put the mask on you first! Burnout is real!

Aim for Transparency, Equity, and Respect

In general, it may be helpful to come to others with concrete proposals. For instance, you may come up with a sketch of a concrete proposal about how to divide service more evenly, or a concrete proposal for how to make sure students aren’t falling through the cracks, or a concrete proposal for how to be more responsive to climate considerations. Having something to workshop with others (especially if you have data showing a need for it) can make it more likely there will be some kind of response. We can also communicate guiding principles for these proposals, such as promoting increased transparency, equity, and respect.

Short term, we may try to fix problems and promote goods by doing all of the work ourselves (e.g., keeping students from falling through the cracks by tracking well-being and reaching out to and meeting with each student ourselves). But this is not sustainable.

Instead, we may:

• Try to identify or establish institutions that can make a difference
• Come to those institutions with concrete proposals that would change things
• Once approved, get those new methods into institutional memory