The oil and gas industry is moving to quash state universities’ “climate justice” course materials that denounce fossil fuels and promote violence to force the U.S. to adopt green energy policies.
Ohio State University paused a proposed course change for a geography class that would have taught fall semester students “the political economy of climate change and the political philosophy of climate justice.”
The course drew the attention of International Natural Gas Association of America President Amy Andryszak.
She wrote to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and flagged a book that would be assigned: Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.”
The book, according to its publisher, “makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse.”
Mr. Malm argues for forcing an end to fossil fuel extraction with actions and destruction of equipment and tools.
“We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines,” the book tells readers.
Ms. Andryszak questioned Ohio taxpayer funding of anti-fossil-fuel curricula in a state that is one of the nation’s top 10 natural gas producers.
“The teaching of this book anywhere, but especially in a publicly funded state university, is very concerning, should be investigated by the State and, in our opinion, prohibited,” Ms. Andryszak wrote to the governor. “The activities advocated in the book can result in death, danger, and serious injury to those perpetrating the acts and innocent bystanders.”
The course and the book are not included in the university’s autumn semester, according to a draft syllabus.
Mr. DeWine’s spokesman Dan Tierney said the governor is reviewing the letter “to determine what claims … are factual.”
A workflow sheet requesting the course changes shows “college approval” was obtained in October, but university officials do not know when or whether it will be offered.
A spokesperson for the university told The Washington Times that the course is not on the fall schedule.
“The course is not currently offered. It’s not scheduled for summer or autumn 2024,” spokesman Benjamin Johnson said.
Mr. Malm’s book has been assigned in courses at state institutions of higher learning, including Arizona State University, Illinois State University and the University of Washington.
The 2022 movie adaptation has been screened at Yale University, Harvard University, Emerson College, Cornell University, Duke University, Michigan State University, DePauw University and Stanford University, among others.
In a Jan. 16 New York Times interview, Mr. Malm justified pipeline violence and acknowledged it is inevitable that people will be killed if activists start blowing up dozens of pipelines.
“I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now,” he said. “I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents.”
He said the destruction of pipelines is “some distance from that, unfortunately.”
Mr. Malm is an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University in Sweden. He told Bloomberg News in 2022 that the construction of pipelines, gas terminals and oil fields “are acts of violence that need to be stopped — they kill people.”
The proposed course at Ohio State would be offered to sophomores, juniors and seniors. The draft calls for naming the class “climate justice.” It would replace environmental citizenship, which was last taught at the school in 2022.
Topics for the climate justice course would include climate change basics and environmentalism and ideology, according to the draft.
Students would learn about “climate change, capitalism and planetary sovereignty,” which theorizes that the so-called climate crisis will trigger the rise of fascism by forcing leaders to decide who and what must be sacrificed to save the planet.
Enrolled students would read Kohei Saito’s 2022 “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism” and “Climate Leviathan,” which argues that rapid climate change will transform the world in a “terrifying” manner “that makes the construction of viable, radical alternative truly imperative.”
The climate change course ultimately “aims at cultivating the imagination” in college students, professor Joel Wainwright wrote in the draft proposal.
David Randall, director of research for the National Association of Scholars, said Mr. Wainwright’s description is a thin disguise for teaching students to become radical political activists.
“A university president or a board of trustees would be justified by this course alone in putting such a department into receivership, or eliminating the department as inappropriate for a university that searches for truth,” he said. “State policymakers also would be justified in conditioning their funding for the university on its elimination of all courses that foster political activism rather than search for truth.”
The American Petroleum Institute calculated that Ohio’s oil and gas industry directly and indirectly employed 350,000 people in 2021, making up 5% of Ohio’s total employment. The industry revenue contributed more than 7% of the state’s gross domestic product, according to API.
Pipelines are deemed critical infrastructure in the U.S., Ms. Andryszak wrote to the governor.
“Intentional damage to critical infrastructure is punishable by state and federal statute, including potential terrorism charges,” she wrote. “For a public university such as The Ohio State University to allow for the promulgation of this book is in direct conflict with the interest of the taxpayers who support the institution.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.