Please join us for MUSE 2021's kick-off keynote speaker, Jeremy Orr, Esq.

Jeremy Orr is a Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council who focuses on drinking water and source water protection issues, working to ensure that everyone has access to safe, sufficient, and affordable drinking water. With a background in grassroots community organizing and public interest law, Orr most recently served as the national state program director for the Peoples Climate Movement and as an environmental justice coordinator for the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic. Orr holds a bachelor’s, master’s, and law degree from Michigan State University.

Keynote Presentation Abstract: At their core, sustainability, environmental protection, and conservation should all be rooted in policies that seek to advance environmental and public health. Yet, there are times when those policies not only fall short of those goals, but also result in disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable populations —namely, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Since policies are man-made, it is critical that we as professionals in the field constantly take stock of our racial biases and how those biases manifest in our work. In my keynote, I will explore the presence of environmental injustice, racism, and implicit bias in our work and how we can prevent, remedy, and reconcile those harms moving forward.