People

Gar Alperovitz is Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland. He is co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, an organization devoted to developing community wealth-building approaches to democratic reconstruction, and he serves as a founding board member of the New Economics Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he is a former Fellow of Kings College. He served previously as a Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives (with Rep. Robert Kastenmeir of Wisconsin) and the U.S. Senate (with Earth Day Founder, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin). He is the author of America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy (Wiley, 2012); co-author (with Lew Daly) of Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance (New Press, 2009); and co-author (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio) of Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era (Routledge, 2003). He is also a historian of nuclear weapons and the author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Vintage, 1996).

David Bollier is an author, activist, blogger and consultant whose work explores the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. He is the co-author of Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-editor of The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Levellers Press, 2012). His previous books include Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Commons Wealth (2002), Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture (2005), and Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (2009). He hosted the educational film, This Land Is Our Land: The Fight to Reclaim the Commons, and has taught as the Croxton Lecturer at Amherst College. He is  co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally.

James K. Boyce teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he directs the program on Development, Peacebuilding, and the Environment at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University and his B.A. from Yale University. He is the author of Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent (with Leonce Ndikimana, Zed Books, 2011), Investing in Peace (Oxford University Press, 2002), The Political Economy of the Environment (Edward Elgar, 2002), The Philippines: The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era (Macmillan, 1993), and Agrarian Impasse in Bengal (Oxford University Press, 1987), and co-author of A Quiet Violence: View From a Bangladesh Village (with Betsy Hartmann, Zed Press, 1983). He is the co-editor of Reclaiming Nature: Environmental Justice and Ecological Restoration (with Sunita Narain and Elizabeth Stanton, Anthem Press, 2007), Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership (with Barry Shelley, Island Press, 2003) and editor of Economic Policy for  Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador (Lynne Rienner, 1996).

Omar S. Dahi teaches economics at Hampshire College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of economic development and international trade, with a special focus on the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa and on South-South economic cooperation. His publications include articles in the Journal of Development Economics, The Middle East Report, and the Review of Radical Political Economics.

George F. DeMartino is Professor of Economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, where he is co-director of the M.A. Degree in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration.  He has written extensively on economics and ethics, particularly in the context of international economic integration, and also on trade unionism and political economy theory. He is the author of The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Global Economy, Global Justice: Theoretical Objections and Policy Alternatives to Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2000). At present he is co-editing with Deirdre McCloskey an Oxford University Press Handbook on Professional Economic Ethics.

Gerald Epstein is Professor of Economics and a founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also co-coordinator of SAFER, a group of economists and other analysts working for financial restructuring and reform. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his BA from Swarthmore College. He has written extensively on financial regulation, alternative approaches to central banking for employment generation and poverty reduction, and capital account management and capital flows. He also has worked with numerous UN organizations. His recent writings include “Avoiding Group Think and Conflicts of Interest: Widening the Circle of Central Bank Advice” (with Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth), in Central Banking, May 2011, and Beyond Inflation Targeting: Assessing the Impacts and Policy Alternatives (co-edited with Erinc Yeldan, Edward Elgar 2009), and Financialization and the World Economy (Edward Elgar, 2005) .

Gerald Friedman teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Columbia University. He is the author of Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic Labor Movement (Routledge, 2007), State-Making and Labor Movements: The United States and France, 1876-1914 (Cornell University Press, 1998), Success and Failure in Third Party Politics: The Knights of Labor and the Union Labor Coalition in Massachusetts, 1884-88, and What is Wrong with Economics? And What will Make it Right? (Working USA). He is an Associate Editor of Labor History.

Eban Goodstein is Director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. In recent years, he has coordinated climate education events at over 2500 colleges, universities, high schools and other institutions across the country, and he currently directs two national educational initiatives on global warming: C2C and The National Climate Seminar. He is the author of the textbook, Economics and the  Environment (John Wiley and Sons, 2010) now in its sixth edition; Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming (University Press of New England, 2007); and The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment (Island Press, 1999). He serves on the steering committee of the E3 Network: Economics for Equity & the Environment, and on the advisory committee for Chevrolet’s Clean Energy Initiative. He received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. Her most recent book is True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy (Penguin Press, 2011, previously published as Plenitude). Her other books include the national best-seller, The Overworked American (Basic Books, 1993), The Overspent American (Harper Perennial, 1999), and Born to Buy (Scribner, 2005). She is a co-founder and board co-chair of the Center for a New American Dream and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2006 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for expanding the frontiers of economic thought. She is also a co-founder of South End Press and of the Center for Popular Economics, a former Brookings Fellow, and an occasional faculty member at Schumacher College.

Douglas Smith is a consultant, executive, writer, teacher, lawyer and inventor concerned with competitive performance, innovation, strategy, and change. A former co-leader of McKinsey & Company’s worldwide organization practice, his books include On Value and Values: Thinking Differently about We in an Age of Me (FT Press, 2004); The Wisdom of Teams (Harper, 2003); The Discipline of Teams (Wiley, 2001); Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (iUniverse, 1999); Make Success Measurable (Wiley, 1999); Sources of the African Past (iUniverse, 1999); and Taking Charge of Change (Basic Books, 1997). His work spans more than 50 industries in the private, non-profit, and government sectors. He is the architect of many leading field-wide change programs, including NeighborWorks America’s Achieving Excellence in Community Development; the Columbia School of Journalism’s Sulzberger Program; and the Vinson Institute’s Executive Leadership program for Georgia state government leaders. He received his B.A. from Yale University and J.D. from Harvard Law School.