Teaching the climate crisis in the neoliberal university:towards a radical pragmatism in climate education

As critical development scholars teaching the climate crisis, we sit at a juncture. The neoliberal university has placed employability and impact at the forefront of teaching metrics to our elite international student cohort. At the same time, our students face affective tensions in confronting the climate crisis as young people, aspiring to work in consulting, finance or policy careers. On climate, this dissonance means a commitment towards ecomodernist neoliberal policy approaches, the capitalist drivers of the climate crisis. In our paper, we propose a “radical pragmatism” in our climate education, which navigates the tensions of balancing critical climate pedagogy, climate anxiety and demands of the neoliberal university. We draw on eight in-depth interviews with undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in a climate change module in our International Development department at King’s College London. Through radical pragmatism, we teach “solutions” to the climate crisis as embedded in<br/>everyday struggles against fossil capitalism. Concrete alternatives and future imaginaries to the climate crisis are possible without foreclosing hope. Yet, we are not impractically prescriptive on student’s future career aspirations. We hope to provide a climate education that prepares students with critical skills needed to navigate the political realities of the capitalist world we<br/>inhabit.