Neil M. Maher

Neil M. Maher is a professor of history in the federated history department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he teaches environmental, political, and environmental justice history of the United States. His books include Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Apollo in the Age of Aquarius (Harvard University Press, 2018), which was named an outstanding academic title by Choice, a must-read book by Bloomberg View, and one of the best books about the Apollo program by Smithsonian magazine. It also received the Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award from the American Astronautical Society.

Maher has received fellowships, awards, and grants from institutions including Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the Smithsonian Institution, NASA, the National Science Foundation, Princeton University’s Shelby Cullom Davis Center, and, most recently, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He has served as historical advisor for several PBS documentaries and published essays in popular media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yes! magazine. In 2025, Maher cocreated the Community Data, Equity, and AI Lab with Newark residents, which archives, translates, and shares local environmental data with the city’s inhabitants.

Maher’s project, “Unequal Natures: Building Consensus Across a Segregated City,” analyzes environmental inequality in one of the most racially, ethnically, and economically divided cities in America — Newark, New Jersey — and traces how local residents overcame these divisions not only by framing their environmental problems within a more inclusive social justice framework but also by collaborating with wealthier, whiter, more politically conservative suburban residents. The result was one of the most cohesive and powerful environmental justice movements in America.

May 2026