Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Urban Transect Walks: helping your students see the overlap between ecological and social patterns

Posted 14 Aug 2017 / 0

This year around, I put most of my impression of the Ecological Society of America annual meeting into a single summary post [link pending]. But one element of the meeting was so valuable that I wanted to highlight it in a separate post. A field trip led by Charlie Nilon and co-facilitated by Paige Warren, Myla Aronson, Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Cultural Anthropology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Planning

Moral Sense III approaches, June 2nd at St. Francis College

Posted 25 May 2017 / 0

Alison Dell’s Moral Sense III cover art subjected a Richard Alexander figure to paper chromatography Next week, a variety of natural and social scientists will converge on Saint Francis for Moral Sense III, a one day colloquium exploring the human “moral sense”. In part inspired by the work of Richard Alexander, the colloquium marks the Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Population Pressure, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability, Uncategorized

Dr. Roland Kays to speak about conservation biology and camera trapping as part of Pratt’s Green Week celebration

Posted 15 Mar 2017 / 0

I am proud to be collaborating with Photography Labs Manager and Assistant Professor Andy Todd to bring Dr. Roland Kays of North Carolina State University to Pratt Institute. Dr. Kays will make two appearances on the Brooklyn campus during the annual Green Week celebration: On Thursday, March 30th at 6 pm in ARC E-2, Dr. Kays will Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Biodiversity Loss, Birds, Canids, Citizen Science, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Department of Mathematics & Science, Experiments (General), Felids, Hypothesis Testing, Photography, Population Pressure, Primates, Public Outreach, Sustainability

An inspiring summit, but big challenges at home and afar…

Posted 22 Oct 2016 / 0

A still of Josh Fox in Beijing from his newest documentary, How to Let Go of the World. All in all it was an ambitious evening. I am not sure of how it came that Pratt was able to host a visit from Josh Fox, documentary filmmaker, after a screening of his newest movie How to Read More

A Major Post, Activism, Cultural Evolution, Envirolutions, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Population Pressure, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Talks & Seminars

Great conversation at my Columbia University Population Biology Seminar talk

Posted 14 Mar 2016 / 0

It was a great honor to speak on this past Monday, March 7th, 2016 as part of Columbia University’s Population Biology seminar series. I gave a talk entitled “Breeders, Propagators, & Creators: Culture, Biology, and the Future of Human Evolution” to a small group of biology faculty and students from a nice diversity of different Read More

A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Kin Selection, Parenting, Population Pressure, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

Do we need to have a kinder, gentler one-child policy in Western industrial countries?

Posted 23 Nov 2015 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Why Two Kids Are Too Many” This article has a provocative title that makes you believe that it is going to make a persuasive argument for public policy that encourages smaller families, but it is more like a meandering survey of the very confused landscape of the “baby culture wars”. Read More

A Minor Post, Activism, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Population Pressure, Public Policy

Did the population bombers drive China into cultural crisis?

Posted 05 Nov 2015 / 0

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The Los Angeles Times “China drops its ‘one-child’ policy, now let’s ban the ‘population bomb’” Great op-ed that makes it really clear that impact is a function of not just the number of people on the earth but also the resources those people consume (affluence) and technologies used to produce Read More

A Minor Post, Activism, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Prediction, Public Policy, Web

China shifts a failed cultural policy designed to stabilize population

Posted 29 Oct 2015 / 1

The New York Times “China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children” This was a long time coming (see Mara’s Hvistendahl‘s great 2010 piece in Science Magazine for perspective), but the Chinese Communist Party has finally decided to replace its “one child policy” with a “two child policy”. From an evolutionary perspective, there is Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Law, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Social Norms

Urbanization is not urbanization: density, not size, drives sustainability

Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 0

Source: Scientific American Scientific American Graphic Science “Bigger Cities Aren’t Always Greener, Data Show” I do not love the headline here, because it suggests that size rather than density is the issue at hand. It is pretty clear what this data show: building low density cities is not sustainable. The issue here is that we Read More

A Minor Post, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Pollution, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Planning, Web

I will speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at St. Francis College (December 11th, 2015 @ 3pm)

Posted 08 Oct 2015 / 0

I am excited to announce that I am scheduled to speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. The title of my talk is “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what human (re)productive choices mean for the future of our species“, and it will provide a partial overview of Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Parenting, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Psychology, Public Outreach, Reproductive Fitness, Resource Consumption, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability