Higher Education and SDG16

Sarah Mendelson and her collaborators make a compelling case for the Sustainable Development Goals as a promising project for re-energizing progress on social justice, economic development, and human rights. In their vision, law remains a guiding standard, but the SDG approach puts law to work with a tool kit of community organization, operational know-how, and rigorously generated data. Academe has a central role to play in educating the new generation of principled pragmatists in the outlook, skills, and information they will need to boost rights and justice to a higher level.

-- Jack Snyder, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations, Political Science Department, Columbia University

The sobering fact is that the world is falling short of achieving the United Nations’ Sustainability Goals (SDGs). But the contributors to this volume firmly reject the idea that the goals should be abandoned. Instead of running away from the SDG project, the authors here focus on practical next steps toward global sustainability and human rights. The chapters explore a range of novel ways of localizing the goals. They outline new methods of engaging the next generation of policymakers and scholars in human rights and development work, and highlight important leadership roles that universities can play in effectuating the SDG goals going forward. In the process, contributors pinpoint ongoing – but surmountable -- barriers to SDG implementation, such as the failure of government entities and researchers to capture disaggregated data that would support successful tailoring of policies to human rights-based goals. This is a book for those who understand that failure is not an option when it comes to the SDGs, and who are ready to lean into a sustainable future through concrete action.

-- Martha F. Davis, University Distinguished Professor of Law, Northeastern University

Prescient in its exploration of the how inequality has riven United States society and compelling in its urgent call to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for doing something about it here and beyond, this book is essential reading for policymakers, academics and advocates alike. Each chapter takes up separate arena for action. All of them center around Goal 16, on the role of higher education in building peace, justice and strong institutions. Each chapter features new primary source data and practical examples of how cities, universities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements together have used the SDGs to build stronger systems of accountability for fulfilling economic rights. The book centers the “unjust recovery” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to reveal the deeper systemic flaws that perpetuate inequality, while also making clear that student engagement with the SDGs is key to building the political momentum for tackling it.

-- Shareen Hertel, Wiktor Osiayński Chair of Human Rights & Political Science, University of Connect