October 15, 2025
Oakland University English Professor Jeffrey Insko was recently honored by the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter for outstanding academic contributions in support of the environment.
Insko received the 2025 Burton V. Barnes Award for his research and writing about the impact of Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge Inc. on Michigan’s environment, economy and quality of life.
In 2010, Enbridge Line 6B ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, spilling over one million gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. As property owners along the pipeline route, Insko and his wife were directly affected and started a blog where they and others could voice their concerns. The spill brought public attention to another Enbridge pipeline in Michigan, Line 5, that crosses through the Straits of Mackinac.
Insko began researching, writing and speaking about Enbridge pipelines in public and scholarly forums, including teaching about the topic in a Literature and Social Engagement course. He’s also writing two books – one titled “Untimely Infrastructure,” which is an environmental history of the 2010 oil spill, and another titled “The North 30,” a cultural and environmental history of Line 5.
Line 5, in particular, “is an issue that brings together a number of important environmental issues currently facing us,” Insko said. “From the threat of ecological disaster imperiling the Great Lakes to the urgent need to stop burning fossil fuels, the history of pollution in marginalized communities and Indigenous rights.”
While he’s not a member of the Sierra Club, Insko’s environmental advocacy dovetails with many aspects of the organization’s mission. His teaching and scholarship are part of the environmental humanities field, which draws upon the methods and insights of humanistic disciplines like literary studies to address overlapping ecological crises, from climate change to species extinction, energy transition, environmental injustice and more.
Insko teaches courses on topics like literature and energy, oil culture, infrastructure and climate change. Many of these courses have an explicit Michigan focus. He also works with OU’s Campus Alliance for Sustainability and the Environment, serves on the university’s Academic Sustainability Committee and helped organize the fourth annual Michigan Climate Summit, which brought climate leaders, state legislators, educators and environmental advocates to OU’s campus in 2023.
The Sierra Club Michigan Chapter honored Insko and other environmental advocates at a recent awards ceremony in Detroit. In the chapter’s words, Insko received the Burton V. Barnes Award for “extraordinary efforts to provide documentation, historical context and clear eyed analysis of the factual information around the Enbridge Line 6B/78 and Enbridge Line 5 pipeline issues.”
“It’s an honor to be recognized by the Sierra Club, an organization that does so much valuable work to protect the environment,” said Insko. “I’m especially honored to receive an award named for Burton Barnes, a remarkable educator and scholar who had a deep love for Michigan and the state’s magnificent spaces, forests, plants, rivers, lakes and creatures. I share that love and admire his legacy.”
Insko writes about oil pipelines and other environmental issues at The Current.