Rhodes Forum

Peter Brown (Canada), Professor, Department of Geography McGill University

Peter Brown (Canada), Professor, Department of Geography McGill UniversityEducation
B.A., Haverford College, 1961.
M.A., Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, 1964.
Ph.D. (Philosophy), Columbia University, 1969.

Academic and Research Career
Professor Brown’s 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 was the first full time Director of the McGill School of Environment.  The McGill School of Environment is involved in building programs with McGill’s Faculties of Arts, Science, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, as well as Religious Studies, Law, Engineering, Management, and Medicine. 
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.  Professor Brown established the School’s Environmental Policy Programs to operate not only at the University’s College Park campus, but also at Maryland’s Department of the Environment, and at the United States Environmental Protection Agency.    
He has held numerous administrative positions within the University of Maryland System.  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.  He is currently a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Humans and Nature. 

Consulting/Advising
Professor Brown has served as a consultant/advisor to numerous organizations, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Ford Foundation, Bard College, the University of Southern Maine, the University of Maine at Orono, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Colorado State University, the Hastings Center, the Academy for Contemporary Problems, Austin College, Battelle, Clark University, the Department of Energy, the National Academy of Public Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Global Environmental Institute, the National Science Foundation, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Urban Institute. 
 
Boards and Memberships
He has or does serve on the boards of: Defenders of Wildlife, Science and Technology Advisory Board: Environment Canada, Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, Common Cause, the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Maryland Environmental Trust, the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, Blue Hill Heritage Trust, Friends of Walker Pond, and the Editorial Advisory Board Politics and the Life Sciences, for which he served as Canadian contributing editor. He was 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.  He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and of the Centre for Climate and Global Change Research at McGill University.