Profile

Panel-Discussion: Vision for the Future
Saturday Nov. 17, 11h00-12h30

Peter G. Brown is a professor at University McGill's School of Environment (B.A., Haverford College, 1961; M.A., Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, 1964; Ph.D. (Philosophy), Columbia University, 1969). His teaching, research, and service are concerned with ethics, governance, and the protection of the environment. His appointments at McGill are in the School of Environment, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences. He is also associate professor at the Institut des sciences de l'environnement at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He was the first full time Director of the McGill School of Environment.

Before coming to McGill, he was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland's graduate School of Public Affairs. While at the University of Maryland he founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, as well as the School of Public Policy itself.

He has taught at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Washington, and at St. John's College in Annapolis. In the early 1970s, he was Visiting Fellow at Battelle Seattle Research Center and Assistant Vice President for Research Operations at The Urban Institute.

Professor Brown has served as a consultant and advisor to numerous organizations and has served or serves on numerous boards. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, serves as a Governor of Les Amis de la Montagne; he was a member of The Expert Working Party on Biotechnology, Sustainable Development and Canada's Future Development, and is listed in Who's Who in America.

Professor Brown is the author of Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America (Beacon Press, 1994), and Ethics, Economics, and International Relations: Transparent Sovereignty in the Commonwealth of Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2000); re-published in Canada by Black Rose Press (2001) as The Commonwealth of Life: A Treatise on Stewardship Economics. Its revised second edition under the title The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing Earth was published in August 2007.

He is currently working on two new books. One is tentatively entitled Reverence for Life: A Philosophy for Civilization which is intended as a sequel to Albert Schweitzer's Philosophy of Civilization published in the 1920s. He also serves as the convener for, and major contributor to, a volume on macro-economics being developed under the auspices of the Quaker Institute for the Future. It is provisionally entitled An Economics for Spaceship Earth : A General Theory of Thermodynamics, Ethics and Life's Prospects. .

Professor Brown is involved in tree farming and conservation efforts in Maryland, Maine, and Quebec. He is a Certified Quebec Forest Producer.