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Biologist
to head Yale's environment school
May/June 2009
by
Carole Bass '83, '97MSL
If you
want to know the focus of the outgoing dean of the School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies (F&ES), just read the title of his latest book: The
Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from
Crisis to Sustainability. The most recent book by the incoming dean -- Sir Peter Crane, whose
appointment was announced in March -- suggests a different focus: The Origin of
Modern Terrestrial Ecosystems: Fossils, Phylogeny, and Biogeography.
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Crane was knighted in 2004 for his service to plant conservation.
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By
choosing an evolutionary biologist to succeed James Gustave "Gus" Speth '64,
'69LLB, an outspoken expert in law and policy, is F&ES shifting its
emphasis from advocacy toward science? Not at all, says Crane, a professor at
the University of Chicago and former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in
Kew, England. "I'm a firm believer in speaking out on issues. So I would be sad
if there was any diminution in the school's profile," he says. "The issue is
how to get the balance right between the science and the more activist side of
the environmental agenda. We need to do both, and we need to do both very
well."
Speth,
a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former United Nations
development official, helped draw attention to the school. His decade as dean
brought significant growth in F&ES's faculty, course offerings, number of
international students, and fund-raising. He has also served as a leader in
Yale's institutional greening -- prodding President Richard Levin to reduce the
university's greenhouse gas emissions, for example, and overseeing the creation
of the school's new headquarters, Kroon Hall, a showpiece of green design that
opened this spring. After retiring from Yale, Speth will join the faculty of
the Vermont Law School.
Crane
has a lower political profile, although he was knighted in 2004 for his service
to plant conservation. Like Speth, he brings an urgency about climate change
and other pressing environmental issues. An expert in biodiversity, he helped
establish the Millennium Seed Bank, a vault in Great Britain in which
scientists are preserving seeds of wild plants threatened with extinction.
Crane
says it's too early to know just what the school's role will be in the next few
years, but that the school's interdisciplinary faculty will find its way. "We
can't do it all; we're going to have to pick our spots," he declares. "We're
going to have to think carefully about the kind of training we want to provide.
And we need to do that together." 
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