ABSTRACT

Higher education in the United States is today a troubled institution. One index of its troubled nature is the rise of an illiberal ideology that calls itself sustainability. This chapter characterizes this movement and its underlying sociology in a manner that pays some debt to Joseph Ben-David's account of the constituent elements of the university. Sustainability's three heads are environmentalism, green economics, and social justice. Its fierceness is directed toward those it suspects would trespass against its edicts on wastefulness and privilege. Sustainability is an ideology of the left promoted with one eye on career advancement by student affairs bureaucrats, and sustainability is a quasi-religious doctrine that has gained a Bacchae-like following of academics intent on uniting everyone into the cult. But sustainability in the American university is also several more things. It has become a new type of academic program. Arizona State University was among the first to create a degree in sustainability.