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AROUND THE QUADS

Time Cites Sachs, Earth Institute Director, Among World’s 100 Most Influential People

By Alex Sachare ’71

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, was listed among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for the second consecutive year. Sachs is one of only 16 people to make the list in both years of its existence, along with such figures as President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Kim Jong Il and Nelson Mandela.

“This list isn’t scientific,” said Adi Ignatius, Time’s executive editor. “There’s no way to quantify influence. But we take the list very seriously. We tried to pull together a list that got at all aspects of influence, from military might to life-changing innovation to inspirational artistry.”

Time invited other luminaries to write the profiles of many of the 100 notables. Bono, lead singer of U2 and a social activist, wrote Sach’s profile. He also wrote the foreword to Sachs’ new book, The End of Poverty.

Bono (left) says that when he met Jeffrey Sachs, he was “struck by his uncanny ability to communicate arcane, complex economic policy and by his punk-rock instinct to question the status quo.” PHOTO: ARNIE ADLER

“Some academics are said to live in ivory towers,” Bono wrote. “Jeffrey Sachs is a pioneer of the mud-hut school of thought. He is an economist who loves statistics because they are pictures of people’s lives — people, in many cases, for whom economics means working out how to feed a family on less than a dollar a day. The equations in Jeff’s head interest him because they reveal how we might be able to change the world we inhabit.

“The title of his new book, The End of Poverty, sounds lofty. It is lofty. But a poverty of ambition isn’t going to prevent the deaths of 30,000 children daily from malaria, a preventable and treatable disease, or from hunger in a world of plenty. Jeff’s hardheaded analysis does not stop at why and how to do all this. He’s just as concerned with who and when.”

The Earth Institute is a leading academic center for the integrated study of Earth, its environment and society. Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and professor of health policy and management. He also is director of the U.N. Millennium Project and special advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed-upon goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease and hunger by the year 2015.

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