Empowering students to confront environmental injustice: Dialogue, theory, empathy, and partnership.

Many students find environmental justice to be emotionally overwhelming and/or politically alienating, and there is currently little work that provides instructors with effective techniques for addressing these types of challenges. In this paper, upon situating the environmental studies classroom and the broader undergraduate experience in sociohistorical context, we identify four sequential strategies for engaging and empowering students on environmental justice issues. First, instructors can by strategically framing course content for the unique composition of the audience, sharing their own racialized experiences (or working with a guest speaker who would be willing to do so), and using interactive assignments to encourage student participation.

Empathic choices for animals versus humans: the role of choice context and perceived cost.

People appear to empathize with cases of animal suffering yet to disregard such suffering when it conflicts with human needs. In three studies, we used an empathy regulation measure - the empathy selection task - to test whether people choose or avoid sharing in experiences of animals versus humans. In Study 1, when choosing between sharing experiences of animals or humans, participants preferred humans and rated sharing animal (versus human) experiences as more cognitively costly.

Democratizing ownership and participation in the 4th Industrial Revolution: challenges and opportunities in cellular agriculture.

The emergence of the "4th Industrial Revolution," i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo.