The Record 2006 - Keble College - University of Oxford

The College at Large
Eventually I became disillusioned with teaching French and Latin to
Africans: what use would they ever have for that? Moreover I had
found, thanks to numerous game park safaris during school vacations,
that I could take wildlife photos of a standard to make them eminently
saleable around the world. So I became a professional photographer
and spent four years gazing at lion prides and elephant herds through
a camera lens.
Eventually photography palled too, so I took up journalism and wrote
a couple of books on wildlife, one of them a best seller. I also tried
my hand at public lecturing, and during a tour of the United States, a
university professor suggested I consider reading for a Ph.D. in wildlife.
No matter that my first degrees had been in Foreign Languages, hardly
a basis for wildlife studies; but one of my books was being assigned to
students as a semi-textbook. At age 35 I embarked on life as a graduate
student, drawing on the thousands of hours I had sat in my safari
truck waiting for a lion to jump on board a zebra, passing the time
by reading piles of scientific papers and books galore. I found I was
sufficiently au fait with what’s what in the wildlife arena, in the broader
environmental arena too, and from the standpoint of the social sciences
as well as the life sciences.
I completed an interdisciplinary doctorate in just three years,
then headed back to Kenya where I set up shop as a consultant in
Environment and Development. And that is what I have done for the
past thirty years, albeit while based in England for much of the time.
I have undertaken projects for the US National Research Council,
the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations, the US Departments
of State and Defence, the White House, several UN agencies, and
as adviser to four prime ministers/presidents and Al Gore. I once
co-directed a $55 million project for the World Bank on Natural
Resources Management in the Philippines. I am currently a member
of the High-Level Advisory Group to advise the Director General
of the World Trade Organization. I have likewise earned a living
through lecturing in North America, Japan and Australia; and
through visiting professorships at Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley and
Stanford Universities (when I spent a month at Harvard I lectured
in departments as diverse as biology, evolution, genetics, forestry,
demography, economics, political science, international relations,
governance, and philosophy). I am an Adjunct Professor at Duke
University, now ranked fourth in the United States; and have served as
White Professor at Cornell University, an academic niche previously
occupied by only two British biologists, Sir Richard Southwood and Sir
Peter Medawar.
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