College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Above ↑ “Local environmental issues … are linked to global processes. Events in an urban center like Milwaukee or a rural area in northern Wisconsin affect and are affected by events across the world.” - Samer Alatout
Environmental Issues are Global - Samer Alatout
Environmental sociologist Samer Alatout believes the mission of the College, and any land grant institution, must include an international component.
“Local environmental issues and their role in constructing social and political identities are linked to global processes,” he says. “Events in an urban center like Milwaukee or a rural area in northern Wisconsin affect and are affected by events across the world.”
Alatout joined the rural sociology department and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in 2003 after completing a Ph.D. at Cornell University and a post-doctoral fellowship at Dartmouth College. He was hired through an initiative to add faculty in the area of international environmental affairs and global security. What drew him to UW-Madison was the leading reputation of his department and the public mission of land grant institutions.
“Schools like CALS are engaged with the public at large, and to me the place of an academic should also entail an engagement with the public,” he says. “I see my work as grounded in a larger community.”
Alatout is interested in the connections between local, regional, and global environmental and political issues. “International connections are important not only for education or for prompting international trades but also for promoting mutual understanding among various peoples and cultures. This understanding will, in the end, promote a real, non-confrontational sense of security.”
Alatout says that while he sees the College as “an agent of change on the level of the university, the state and the nation” he also sees room for CALS to expand its mission. To that end, he serves as a member of the College’s task force on internationalization.
One of his current projects is a comparative investigation of how “environmental narratives” define racial, ethnic and political relations between the Indian tribes of Wisconsin and the state and federal government and also between Palestinians and Israelis.
Alatout is also the co-leader of a multinational team of academics, policy-makers and representatives of nongovernmental organizations who are providing possible scenarios for the environmental future of Palestine and Israel.