What Matters Now in Higher Ed
On Sunday, May 26, educator and author Ahmed Afzal joined CUHF Council members from around the world to ask where...
In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future
we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.
We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet,
the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…
and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.
With open hearts and minds,
we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.
We ask… what matters from here?
Given what we know, how do we live now?
How might we serve, individually and together…
with and for the Earth?
Listening together, collective wisdom may arise
between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based,
life-affirming ways into the new realities…
These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,
and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning
that may grow from them, are path for these times… mycelial and emergent.
Please explore our practice stream, readers and films…
Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members,
and how you might join us.
…and shifting the paradigm.
In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future…we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.
We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet, the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.
With open hearts and minds, we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.
We ask… what matters from here? Given what we know, how do we live now? How might we serve, individually and together…with and for the earth?
Listening together, collective wisdom may arise between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based, life-affirming ways into the new realities…
These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning that may grow from them, are path for these times…mycelial and emergent.
Please explore our practice stream, readers and films. Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members, and how you might join us.
…it shifts the paradigm, sustaining us.
Bayo Akomolafe, CUHF Senior Fellow
We are honored that visionary Bayo Akomolafe is serving as the inaugural Senior Fellow to the Council on the Uncertain Human Future this year. He is also W. E. B. DuBois Fellow for Trans-public Intellectualism at the Schumacher Center for Local Economics in Great Barrington MA.
A psychologist, poet, philosopher, teacher, public intellectual and holder of Yoruba ancestry, Bayo encourages revelatory perspectives; he leans into the cracks around the questions of our time.
2024 Threshold Councils
Transformation—of the planet and the civilizations it has brought forth—is always underway. Yet in this decade, and even this year, we see accelerated change in the living system itself, and the frameworks devised by humans within it.
It is often at the threshold—in the crossing and naming it calls forward—that we may come present more deeply to each other and what is taking place; this year, five distinctive Threshold Councils have emerged as communities of inquiry, insight and collective wisdom for these times.
Eco-Dharma Partnership
NDF + CUHF
For over ten years, the Council on the Uncertain Human Future and Natural Dharma Fellowship have partnered in a rich and evolving collaboration of shared vision, intentions and concern. Together, through a variety of joint programs and practices, our collaboration has furthered the possibilities for deepening awareness, practice and embodiment in and for these times.
On this community, this practice
Since the beginning, we’ve listened for how CUHF might serve in these unprecedented times. In response, our conversations and practices have been mycelial in nature—deepening and evolving to meet the call. At ten years, the CUHF community and network continues to grow, morph and surprise us in its compassion, tenacity and possibilities.
In this time of profound uncertainty, dissolution and revelation, we asked a group of Council members to speak about how they understand our work, and what it offers for these times. Their voices are gathered in a circle in this special publication, available now through ISSU.
On Sunday, May 26, educator and author Ahmed Afzal joined CUHF Council members from around the world to ask where...
On Sunday, November 5, Council members and conveners from around the world came together for the final What Matters Now...
Members of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future came together at MASSMoCA on Thursday, October 19th to celebrate the...
On Sunday, October 8, the CUHF What Matters Now series continued as Council members and conveners joined with a call...
CUHF Community at MIT
Since the summer of 2020, faculty and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been convening in small circles to build and deepen collective reflection on the planetary environmental crisis, as an Affiliate of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future.
It’s Time for Higher Education to “Get Real” about the Climate Crisis
Learn about the history of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and our work in A new Earth conversation (NEC) at Clark University, in a new piece by CUHF Core Team member, Diana Chapman Walsh.
A new Earth conversation Brochure
The initial Council on the Uncertain Human Future (2014) inspired Clark University faculty and staff to join the process (2015-2019); a vision for A new Earth conversation emerged from those Councils and has grown into a campus-wide climate initiative, enabling deeper conversation and cultivating possibility with students.
View the brochure on Issu