By Trevor Williams ’13, Staff Writer

On Wednesday, February 22, Newark Academy hosted Dr. Majora Carter as a part of the yearlong Global Speaker Series. Dr. Carter, a New York native and founder of the nonprofit organization “Sustainable South Bronx,” is an advocate of sustainable development and urban revitalization.

Hers was a fresh presentation and an impassioned portrayal of issues close to home and, unfortunately, frequently ignored. As Dr. Carter spoke about topics that are all too often overlooked, I found myself wondering “With cable television, twenty-four hour news networks, and the internet spawning news stories interminably, why do I not know more about this?”

Few places illustrate Dr. Carter’s point more tragically than NA’s former home. Over the past fifty years Newark’s population has declined by thirty percent while New Jersey’s has increased by sixty percent. It is not without irony that Dr. Carter spoke about white flight to a school that embodies white flight.

One of the most valuable lessons I took away from the presentation was the point that environmentalism does not have to be a partisan issue. If you were to mention Annie Leonard to certain NA students or faculty members you would receive derisive laughter. That is too bad, because some of her points (like her discussion of externalized pollution costs) were more or less valid. A few days after the presentation, former student and current alumnus Matt Willian ’11 stood up in morning meeting and pointed out that environmentalism didn’t have to be a liberal or conservative issue: it could be nonpartisan. Environmentalism is now highly partisan and highly contested—just like almost everything else in our present political landscape—but it was not always this way: think Theodore Roosevelt.

Dr. Carter’s presentation raised countless questions, and I am sorry I could not get the chance to ask them. For instance, she spoke about green collar jobs. Are green collar jobs sufficient as an engine of economic growth? Fifty years ago twenty-eight percent of the American nonfarm workforce worked in manufacturing. Today the figure is about nine percent. Globalization and the transition to a service economy are more or less inescapable forces. From where will the jobs come? Dr. Carter also spoke about high incarceration rates. To what extent are our crowed prisons a consequence of a broken criminal justice system? How can we reform the system itself?

While her presentation left more questions than answers, Dr. Carter did an admirable job of calling attention to an important but all-too-easily-forgotten issue, framing it in terms that were accessible and understandable. I will not be alone when I say that she left quite an impression on the NA community.