Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. A recent survey by The Economist Magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world’s three most influential living economists of the past decade. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “The Age of Sustainable Development," 2015 with Ban Ki-moon.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, September 21, 2017 Trump Pushes US Closer to War Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday moved the world closer to war. The speech was Hitlerian in tone and content, filled with vitriol and grievance. Germany, said Hitler, was stabbed in the back by its own leaders after World War I. The Obama administration, declared Trump, signed... Read more |
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Views Monday, August 28, 2017 Afghanistan and the Collapse of American Governance For years Donald Trump called for an end to America’s war in Afghanistan. Yet as president he has quickly decided to expand the war. Since Trump’s presidency fails daily on so many levels, it’s easy to overlook an important lesson of Trump’s awful Afghanistan decision. The Afghanistan war is both... Read more |
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Views Saturday, July 29, 2017 Lessons from JFK in a Time of Trump In the last week of July, 54 years ago, President John F. Kennedy initialed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with his counterpart, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy spoke to the nation in a remarkable address , which reminds us of his gifts of vision and eloquence; of the obligation and... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 20, 2017 Lies and the Lying Lobbyists Who Tell Them The greatest problem in Washington is not polarization but lying. The legislative machinery has ground to a halt not because of the great divide between liberals and conservatives but because of the great divide between the lobbyists and the people. The lobbyists want things that are against the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 11, 2017 Ending the Ronald Reagan Lie As they return from the July Fourth break, the Republican leadership is twisting in agony on the Obamacare repeal and it couldn’t happen to a more miserable bunch. President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have been trying to jam through a deeply unpopular... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 18, 2017 Our Misguided 'Wars of Choice' There is one foreign policy goal that matters above all the others, and that is to keep the United States out of a new war, whether in Syria, North Korea, or elsewhere. In recent days, President Trump has struck Syria with Tomahawk missiles, bombed Afghanistan with the most powerful nonnuclear bomb... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 03, 2017 US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East It’s time to end US military engagements in the Middle East. Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings — the whole nine yards. Over and done with. That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and other US security... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 13, 2017 The Ethics and Practicalities of Foreign Aid As a lifelong advocate for development aid for the world’s poor, I am angered by the reported plans of the Trump administration to slash US foreign aid. I know how many children will die or grow up without access to education if President Trump’s proposals are adopted. I know that the financial... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 31, 2016 The Fatal Expense of American Imperialism The single most important issue in allocating national resources is war versus peace, or as macroeconomists put it, “guns versus butter.” The United States is getting this choice profoundly wrong, squandering vast sums and undermining national security. In economic and geopolitical terms, America... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 01, 2016 America’s True Role in Syria Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States... Read more |