David Naguib Pellow is currently the Dehlsen Chair Professor of Environmental Studies, and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously, Pellow was the Don Martindale Endowed Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. He was also Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Pellow has written multiple works focusing on environmental justice, race and ethnicity studies, sustainability, and immigration. He is also a co-winner of the 2002 The C. Wright Mills Award, a distinction given annually by the Society for the Study of Social Problems to authors of the most outstanding book in sociology.

His 2002 book, Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago, investigated how garbage affects residents in low-income communities within Chicago and how racial politics influence the waste industry in the United States. His 2007 book, Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice, furthers the discussion of environmental inequality by examining the transnational waste trade from the 1980s to modern day.

Pellow’s most recent work was his 2017 book, What is Critical Environmental Justice? In this book, Pellow explores environmental justice through the framework of events such as the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Other common themes in his work include social protest, globalization, and labor movements.

Pellow received a B.A. in Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1992. Afterwards he earned an M.A. and PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1998.

Written by Tess Abraham, Class of 2021

Dorceta E. Taylor currently teaches at Yale University as a Professor of Environmental Justice. Taylor earned her B.A. in Geography and Biology from Northeastern Illinois University, masters’ of art, philosophy, and forest science from Yale University, and a combined doctoral degree in Forestry and Environmental studies and Sociology from Yale. Dr. Taylor was the first African-American woman to receive a doctoral degree from Yale’s School of Forestry (now the Yale School of the Environment).

Exploring the intersections of diversity and environmentalism, Taylor is a leading environmental historian. Reexamining the environmental movement’s origins, one of Taylor’s award-winning books, The Environment and the People in American Cities, argues that environmental activism began in cities, not rural or ex-urban communities. Riot Books recognized Taylor’s Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility as one of the ten most influential recent books on climate change; Toxic Communities explores how race and socio-economics factor into exposure to environmental hazards in the United States. Taylor has also published many peer-reviewed articles including “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Connectedness to Nature and Landscape Preferences Among College Students” and “Food Availability and the Food Desert Frame in Detroit: An Overview of the City’s Food System.” Taylor has applied her expertise to governmental studies on urban agriculture, food access, and food insecurity. In one study, Taylor led a U.S. Department of Agriculture examination of food access in Michigan, noting the disparities in access to healthy foods.

Taylor’s commitment to equity and diversity within the environmental movement and her use of her scholarly experience to help others has not gone unnoticed. In 2019, the Smithsonian Institution honored Dr. Taylor, and, last year, the American Association of Retired Persons recognized Taylor as one of six people carrying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy forward.

Written by Walker McCarthy, Class of 2022