2021-2022 Luce Scholar

Evan Tims is a police misconduct investigator, climate fiction writer, and researcher. Growing up in coastal Maine, Evan developed an early interest in the relationship between narrative, social justice, and environmental change. At Bard College, he received a joint bachelor’s degree in Human Rights and Written Arts, two fields that allowed him to explore formulations of rights and cultural attentiveness to injustice through a variety of lenses. While at Bard, Evan won two Critical Language Scholarships that funded Bangla studies in Kolkata, India. Evan’s senior thesis explored the intersections between climate and social justice using a combination of experimental fiction and academic research. Evan received the Bard Written Arts Prize and the Christopher Wise Award in environmentalism and human rights for his thesis, which he later published in shortened form in Mapping Meaning: The Journal. Evan’s passion for human rights led him to become an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City, the largest police oversight agency in the U.S. At the CCRB, he has investigated numerous cases of NYPD misconduct and developed a broader understanding of the intersecting crises of environmental and social injustice. Evan ultimately hopes to spend his career addressing the social harm engendered by the climate crisis through the perspective of human rights. When he isn’t working, Evan is usually devoted to a number of other interests, including gardening, landscape painting, and Bangla vocal performance, or otherwise lost somewhere in the woods.