Is Ohio State University Offering a Course on Pipeline Destruction?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Late last month, Amy Andryszak, the president and CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, sent a letter to Gov. Michael DeWine (R-OH) in response to seeing The Ohio State University initially had plans to add How to Blow Up a Pipeline to its curriculum.

The book, written by Swedish professor of human ecology and climate change activist Andreas Malm in 2021, advocates the climate social justice movement to ramp up its tactics “in the face of ecological collapse.” Part of its argument includes advocating the destruction of equipment and tools used in the production of fossil fuels.

The New York Times review of the book details Malm’s argument that because the ruling class response to climate change has been inadequate, the “proportionate and rational response should be to target fossil fuel infrastructure: Destroy fences around a power plant; occupy pipeline routes, as protesters did for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.” And do the same at coal mines.

In a Jan. 14 story titled “How This Climate Activist Justifies Political Violence,” Malm told the New York Times that he wanted sabotage of fossil fuel operations to be on a much bigger scale than it is now.

His book, which does not give actual instructions for destroying a pipeline, does ask why the climate justice movement stayed so peaceful. When questioned by the reporter how confident he is that when you open the door to political violence, it stays at the level of property and not people, this is how the conversation went:

Reporter: It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage.

Malm: Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately.

Reporter: Don’t say “unfortunately.”

Malm: Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.

Andryszak cast doubt in her letter to DeWine on the wisdom of Ohio taxpayers financing a curriculum that includes a book that unabashedly advocated violence of an industry where thousands of Ohioans are employed in one of the country’s top natural gas producers.

“The teaching of this book anywhere, but especially in a publicly funded state university, is very concerning, should be investigated by the State and, in our opinion, prohibited,” she wrote.

She added: “The activities advocated in the book can result in death, danger, and serious injury to those perpetrating the acts and innocent bystanders.”

The class Geography 3597.03 according to the university was initially established in 2008 as a “team-taught, cross-disciplinary course in English and Geography about ‘Environmental citizenship’.”

However, Geography 3597.03 had not been team-taught in a decade, and, over time, the course content and focus evolved considerably.

What was initially a course about students’ understanding of their environments and involvement as citizens in environmental affairs became a course on the political economy of climate change and the political philosophy of “climate justice.” Indeed, “climate justice” has been the de facto but unofficial title of the course for the past four years. That change from Geography to Climate became official when the course was offered last fall.

Joel Wainwright, professor in the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University, who designed and is scheduled to teach the class, said in an interview conducted by the university’s Global Arts + Humanities program manager he “was a Marxist who shares a similar background with Geoff Mann, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University, with whom he co-authored Climate Leviathan” a book they published in 2018.

Wainwright wrote in the course description that “while this course starts—as it must—with a sober, scientific assessment of the current crisis of the Earth and humanity, marked by economic insecurity, a lack of faith in political parties, species loss, and climate change, ultimately, this course aims at cultivating the imagination.”

Wainwright said one of the educational goals of the class was for “successful students to integrate approaches to the theme by making connections to out-of-classroom experiences with academic knowledge or across disciplines and/or to work they have done in previous classes and that they anticipate doing in future.”

The course was approved by university in October and is seemingly still listed for the fall. Yet Chris Booker, the university director of Media and PR, told me that “The course in question has not been offered since autumn 2022 and is not listed for summer or autumn 2024.”

A study prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2021 for the American Petroleum Institute showed the natural gas industry supported over  351,000 jobs in Ohio, 71,160 direct and 280,370 indirect.

That number represents 5.0 percent of Ohio’s total employment. That study also showed the natural gas industry contributed over $55 billion toward the state’s economy in 2021.

Which means anywhere from a handful to hundreds of people are working at some sort of natural gas facility at any given time in the state, raising the prospect of accidental violence happening to a geologist, farmer, technician, welder, engineer, chemist, or welder working in the industry.

Such an accidental injury or fatality was what Malm shrugged off in his New York Times interview.

“But the thing we need to keep in mind is that existing pipelines, new pipelines, new infrastructure for extracting fossil fuels are not potentially, possibly — they are killing people as we speak,” he said.

Andryszak said while the INGAA deeply respects the First Amendment right to exercise free speech, “We have a strong opposition to the use of taxpayer funds to support terrorism through the destruction of  critical infrastructure,” she said, adding, “The teaching of this book anywhere, but especially in a publicly funded state  university is very concerning.”

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Andryszak said the tactics advocated in the book could result in either serious injury to workers in the industry or innocent bystanders.

The INGAA confirmed one month after sending the letter they have not received a response from the governor’s office.