Shafiei, Fatemeh
Fatemeh Shafiei
Dr. Fatemeh Shafiei is an associate professor and the director of the environmental studies program at Spelman College. She has worked for many years to support environmental justice and environmental education. Dr. Shafiei was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) member from 2012-2018. The NEJAC is a federal advisory committee that advises the US EPA on environmental justice issues. Recently, her work has focused on environmental determinants of health disparities. She is quoted frequently in the Grist article “Coronavirus is not just a health crisis — it’s an environmental justice crisis” published in April 2020.
“We’re really not thinking of the environment in the traditional silos but more of the holistic, intersectional destiny that we can all connect.” - Fatemeh Shafiei, 2020 (from ICW Public Scholarship, 2020)
Donley, Nathan, Robert D. Bullard, Jeannie Economos, Iris Figueroa, Jovita Lee, Amy K. Liebmam, Domininca Navarro Martinaz, and Fatemeh Shafiei. 2022. Pesticides and Environmental Injustice in the USA: Root Causes, Current Regulatory Reinforcement and a Path Forward. PMC Public Health, 22: 708. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13057-4
Adida, C., Lake, D., Shafiei, F., & Platt, M. 2020. Broadening the PhD Pipeline: A Summer Research Program for HBCU Students. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(4), pp. 723 – 728 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096520000542
Murray A. Rudd,…, Fatemeh Shafiei, et al. (total 40 Authors). 2018. Climate Research Priorities for Policymakers, Practitioners, and Scientists in Georgia, USA. Environmental Management, 62:190-209. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00267-018-1051-4
Antoinette M. Gomez, Fatemeh Shafiei, and Glenn S. Johnson. 2011. Black Women’s Involvement in the Environmental Justice Movement: An Analysis of Three Communities in Atlanta, Georgia. Race, Gender & Class, 18(1-2). ISSN 1082-8354: pp 189-215
Fatemeh Shafiei. 2011. Reducing Health Disparity through Healthy Housing in Rebecca L. Morley, Angela D. Mickalide, and Karin A. Mack, ed. Healthy and Safe Homes: Research, Practice, and Policy, Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association (APHA). https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/9780875531977ch04
Dr. Shafiei was born in Iran in 1952. Growing up, she always enjoyed nature. During graduate school at the University of California, Riverside, she learned about the Bhopal disaster in India. The case study sparked her deep interest in environmental issues. The Bhopal disaster was a chemical accident in 1984 involving the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. It is considered the world’s worst industrial disaster, leading to the death of thousands of people. It was an eye-opening experience for her to discover how pollution can threaten human lives.
When she was a student, environmental justice as an academic discipline did not exist. There were very few scholars who studied and published environmental justice findings. One was Dr. Bullard, now regarded as the “Father of Environmental Justice.” Dr. Bullard was instrumental in shaping
Dr. Shafiei’s interest in the field. Dr. Shafiei completed her undergraduate and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Riverside, in 1978 and 1990, respectively. She teaches, researches, and publishes on climate justice, environmental policy, environmental justice, environmental education, international relations, and health disparities.
After earning her Ph.D., Dr. Shafiei was a visiting lecturer at Riverside Community College in Riverside, California, and Agnes Scott College in Georgia. She joined Spelman College as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in 1992. Two years later, she was hired as an Assistant Professor at Clark Atlanta University, where she hosted an environmental summit from minority perspectives. However, this topic was not well received during that time and was seen more as an act of activism than a scholarly undertaking. In 1994, she returned to Spelman College, where she continued her leadership in environmental justice.
Dr. Shafiei served as Chair of the Department of Political Science from 2012 to August 2021. She is a member of the Environmental Advisory Board (EAB), a permanent subcommittee of the U.S. Army Science Board. She was a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) from 2012 to 2018. She co-founded the Greater Atlanta Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development-officially acknowledged in 2017 by the United Nations University.
She has served as an environmental justice consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Shafiei has been an expert and leader in advancing environmental justice for decades. She has organized and led a broad spectrum of advocacy and educational projects. She has hosted and directed many projects such as “Toxics Release Inventory Regional Workshop,” “Environmental Justice Summit,” “US EPA, Region 4, Teachers Environmental Summer Institute (1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, and 2004)”, “Reimagining the Twenty-First Century through Advancing Education for Sustainability,” and “The Atlanta Environmental Summit: Linking Priorities from a Minority Perspective” (ORIC).
Dr. Fatemeh Shafiei is the Director of the Environmental Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at Spelman College. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Sustainable Spelman Committee.
Dr. Shafiei has served as an invited keynote speaker, panelist, section chair, panel organizer, moderator, and discussant in numerous conferences and forums. Dr. Shafiei has published in public policy, environmental justice, environmental policy, environmental determinants of health disparities, and environmental education. She produced an analysis of environmental laws passed by the Georgia Legislature, documented in nine chapters on environmental policy in Georgia Legislative Review. This annual publication analyzed broad public policy issues in the state.
Dr. Shafiei has successfully secured several grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), and UNCF/Mellon Program for her research in environmental policy and education areas and has served as the principal investigator (PI) and co-principal investigator (Co-PI) for those projects. Dr. Shafiei’s project “Environmental Policy an Innovation Grant: Emergency Planning and Preparedness” is funded by the EPA.
In April 2020, Dr. Shafiei was recognized for her contributions to environmental disparities in health outcomes by being included in an important coronavirus article in Grist magazine. In the article, “Coronavirus is not just a health crisis — it’s an environmental justice crisis, “Yvette Cabrera, the author, discusses how “Dr. Shafiei has studied the social conditions that determine a person’s health” outcome and discovered through her extensive research that there is a great deal of evidence showing that “low-income residents and people of color are disproportionately exposed to health-threatening environments in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces” (Cabrera, 2020). “People are being denied their equal rights,” said Dr. Shafiei, quoted in the article (Cabrera, 2020). “If you look at the disproportionate number of COVID victims and the percentage of African” (Cabrera, 2020). Dr. Shafiei advocates that collecting more COVID-19 data on race/ethnicity and income is crucial and will help policymakers appropriately direct resources to these communities. In the article, Dr. Shafiei said, “COVID showed that it is the result of all these years of policies and practices that have really been detrimental to the health of minority communities and has put them at risk” (Cabrera, 2020).
Looking back, Dr. Shafiei can think of several individuals who gave her the energy to pursue her field of interest. One of them was Dr. Robert Bullard, who was at Clark Atlanta University when she taught there for three years. Aside from individuals, she was also inspired by community activists in Atlanta. She believes that we need meaningful policy change to make a difference.
To her, the role of education was vital in inspiring a movement. Educating the next cadre of constituents that will demand change, Dr. Shafiei has been involved in many community-based projects. In 1994, she co-directed the Teachers’ Environmental Summit Institute, where she, along with other experts, trained teachers for two weeks, hoping they would incorporate their learning into their curriculum. The training involved a tour of the Anniston polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) site in Alabama, where the former Monsanto Corporation’s PCB manufacturing plant was operating in partnership with EPA Region 4. The water in the neighborhoods of Anniston got contaminated with PCB and impacted many residents’ health. This immersive experience was a powerful moment to see what environmental racism means.
Dr. Shafiei enjoys teaching. Spelman is a very unique and special place for her. It is where she continues to meet many rising stars, such as Stacey Abrams, who was one of her students.
“Please make sure that you teach the next generation. Co-produce knowledge with the next generation and the local communities. Without that, change will never happen. Policies are where decisions are made and funding’s allocated. The key to change the status quo is to create a cadre of people who demand change.” – Dr. Fatemeh Shafiei.
Appalachian Trail Conservancy. 2023. Fatemeh Shafiei: Speaker. https://appalachiantrail.org/leadership/fatemeh-shafiei/. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
Cabrera Y. Coronavirus is not just a health crisis - it’s an environmental justice crisis. Grist. https://grist.org/justice/coronavirus-is-not-just-a-health-crisis-its-an…. Published April 24, 2020
ICW Public Scholarship. (2020, October 14). Fatemeh Shafiei, Environmental and Health Science [video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAuMM1IeViU
ORIC Faculty Collaboration Hub (C-Hub). https://oricspelman.com/faculty_details/fatemeh_shafiei-151
Spelman College. 2022. Fatemeh Shafiei, Ph.D. hhttps://www.spelman.edu/academics/faculty/directory/profile/fatemeh-shafiei Spelman College. 2022. COVID 19 Leaders. https://www.spelman.edu/student-life/health-and-wellness/health-services….
Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.