Dear members of the Purdue community,

We are members of the Purdue University Center for the Environment (C4E) Building Sustainable Communities (BSC) Signature Research Area (SRA). We are writing to share with you an Open Letter written by members of our SRA to express our concerns about the upcoming Presidential Lecture on October 19, 2021.

We recognize that this Open Letter may not completely reflect the feelings and thoughts of each of us; at the same time, we feel it is important to have a response to the upcoming Presidential Lecture. More specifically, if you are also concerned about this upcoming Presidential Lecture, we want to let you know that you are not alone, and we understand and share your concerns. If you are concerned about climate change but have not had the opportunity to follow climate science on campus and more broadly, we want to let you know that the upcoming Presidential Lecture speaker does not represent the current state of knowledge in climate science, and many of the speaker’s claims made in the past were misleading and harmful.

We invite you to read and sign our Open Letter to demonstrate your concerns about this upcoming Presidential Lecture and to support rigorous, evidence-based climate science on campus and more broadly.

You can read our Open Letter here.

You can sign our Open Letter here.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Members of the C4E Building Sustainable Communities SRA

Zhao Ma, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

Professor | University Faculty Scholar

Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, College of Agriculture, Purdue University

195 Marsteller Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2033, USA

+1-765-494-1790; zhaoma@purdue.edu

Acknowledgement of Indigenous Caretakers: We acknowledge the traditional homelands of the Indigenous People which Purdue University is built upon. We honor and appreciate the Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi), Lenape (Delaware), Myaamia (Miami), and Shawnee People who are the original Indigenous caretakers.