Jeffrey Sachs
Jeffrey Sachs is the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University as of 2024.
Formerly Sachs was director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, co-chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor at Sunway University, and SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General António Guterres. From 2001-18, Sachs served as Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and António Guterres (2017-18).
Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). Other books include To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013), The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair & Sustainable (2017), A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018), The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020), and most recently, Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development (2022).
Sachs was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. Sachs has received 42 honorary doctorates, and his recent awards include the Legion of Honor by decree of the President of the Republic of France, and the Order of the Cross from the President of Estonia.
Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University. Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.
Sachs told Tucker Carlson in December 2024:
| “ | We have crazy people who think we are going to defeat Russia. But Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads, 1,600 of which are deployed. It has a new hypersonic ballistic missile called Oreshnik, which flies at Mach 11. There are other hypersonic weapons. So yes, we have people in the United States who, in their mental blindness, think about continuing the escalation to nuclear Armageddon. They do. They are very ignorant people, and they are in high positions. So when you ask what happens next, whether President Trump can change course, that is the most important question facing the United States.[1] | ” |
