The recent resignation of Joel Clement from the Department of the Interior — and earlier news that Clement felt he had to file a whistleblower complaint when he was transferred from his position as director of the Office of Policy Analysis to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue — are sources of concern for Bowdoin’s Susan Kaplan and Genevieve LeMoine.
Kaplan, director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, and LeMoine, curator of the Arctic Museum, have dedicated their careers to the study of the Arctic and its peoples.
In a letter to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, they write that Clement has been “an important voice raising awareness of the significant and immediate impacts that anthropogenic climate changes are having on indigenous Alaskan communities” and why they feel his departure is troubling.
To learn more about factors affecting the Arctic read “A Race to Save the Artifacts.”
