63 Facts About Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor.

Jeffrey Sachs is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight to end poverty.

Jeffrey Sachs is an SDG Advocate for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.

From 2001 to 2018, Jeffrey Sachs served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, and held the same position under the previous UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prior to 2016 a similar advisory position related to the earlier Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and disease by 2015.

Jeffrey Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger that has come under scrutiny from critics and was the subject of a book by the journalist Nina Munk.

Jeffrey Sachs is co-editor of the World Happiness Report with John F Helliwell and Richard Layard.

Jeffrey Sachs has been criticized for his views on economics, the origin of COVID-19, his advocacy for the Chinese government, as well as his support for the Russian government's narratives on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Jeffrey Sachs has appeared on Russia state-run channels, including Vladimir Solovyov's evening show.

Jeffrey Sachs was raised in Oak Park, Michigan, in the Detroit metro area, and is the son of Joan and Theodore Jeffrey Sachs, a labor lawyer.

In 1980, Jeffrey Sachs joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1982.

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

From 2002 to 2016, Jeffrey Sachs served as director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, a university-wide organization, with an interdisciplinary approach to addressing complex issues facing the Earth, in support of sustainable development.

Jeffrey Sachs's classes are taught at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health, and his course "Challenges of Sustainable Development" is taught at the undergraduate level.

Jeffrey Sachs has advised several countries on economic policy, including the United Arab Emirates.

When Bolivia was shifting from a dictatorship to a democracy through national elections in 1985, Jeffrey Sachs was invited by the party of Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer to advise him on an anti-inflation economic plan to implement once he was voted to office.

Jeffrey Sachs has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In 1989, Jeffrey Sachs advised Poland's anticommunist Solidarity movement and the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

Jeffrey Sachs wrote a comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market economy which became incorporated into Poland's reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz.

Jeffrey Sachs was the main architect of Poland's debt reduction operation.

In Poland, Jeffrey Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to capitalism.

Jeffrey Sachs received an honorary doctorate from the Krakow University of Economics.

Jeffrey Sachs advised Slovenia in 1991 and Estonia in 1992 on the introduction of new stable and convertible currencies.

Jeffrey Sachs has written extensively on climate change, disease control and globalization.

Jeffrey Sachs has said that a key element to accomplishing this is raising aid from $65 billion in 2002 to $195 billion a year by 2015.

Jeffrey Sachs emphasizes the role of geography and climate as much of Africa is landlocked and disease-prone.

Jeffrey Sachs suggests that with improved seeds, irrigation and fertilizer, the crop yields in Africa and other places with subsistence farming can be increased from 1 ton per hectare to 3 to 5 tons per hectare.

Jeffrey Sachs supports establishing credit and microloan programs which are often lacking in impoverished areas.

Jeffrey Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for $3 billion per year, therefore suggesting that anti-malaria projects would be an economically justified investment.

Previously a special adviser to secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Jeffrey Sachs is an advocate for the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals which build upon and supersede the MDGs.

Jeffrey Sachs was photographed with Matt Damon and developed a friendship with international celebrities Bono and Angelina Jolie, who traveled to Africa with Sachs to witness the progress of the Millennium Villages.

Jeffrey Sachs has criticised the International Monetary Fund and its policies around the world and blamed international bankers for what he says is a pattern of ineffective investment strategies.

Jeffrey Sachs is one of the founders of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project.

In 2012 Jeffrey Sachs claimed that nuclear power is the only solution to climate change, but he has since revised his opinion, suggesting in 2021 that carbon neutrality could be achieved without the use of nuclear power.

Jeffrey Sachs has argued for closer relations between the US and China and warned of the danger of tensions between them.

Jeffrey Sachs set up a number of task forces, including one on the origins of the virus.

Jeffrey Sachs appointed British American disease ecologist Peter Daszak, a colleague of Jeffrey Sachs' at Columbia, to head this task force, two weeks after the Trump administration prematurely ended an federal grant supporting a project led by Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

However, as Jeffrey Sachs became increasingly drawn to the lab leak theory, he came into conflict with Daszak and his task force, forcing his resignation in summer 2021 and disbanding the group in September that year.

In May 2022, alongside his colleague, Neil L Harrison, Sachs wrote an article calling for an independent inquiry into the origin of COVID-19.

Jeffrey Sachs has suggested that the US was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.

American writer Michael Busch commented that Jeffrey Sachs was incapable of identifying issues in others' ideas and cannot tolerate challenges to his own work.

Jeffrey Sachs wrote that none of the executives of several US companies which had been fined for sanctions violations were arrested.

Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at Asia Society, noted that Jeffrey Sachs had written a foreword to a Huawei position paper, and questioned whether Jeffrey Sachs had been paid by Huawei.

In June 2020, Jeffrey Sachs said the targeting of Huawei by the US was not solely about security.

The authors allege that Jeffrey Sachs has ties to a number of Chinese state bodies and the private energy corporation CEFC China Energy for which he has spoken.

The letter's signatories wrote that Jeffrey Sachs took the same stance as China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a digression to the history of US rights violations as a way to avoid discussions of China's mistreatment of Uyghurs.

The rights groups went on to say that Jeffrey Sachs "betrayed his institution's mission" by trivializing the perspective of those who were oppressed by the Chinese government.

Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief at The Globalist, and JD Bindenagel, a former US ambassador, wrote that Jeffrey Sachs was "actively agitating for a classic Communist propaganda ploy".

Jeffrey Sachs endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and has provided advice to Sanders.

In 2004 and 2005, Jeffrey Sachs was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time.

Jeffrey Sachs was named one of the "500 Most Influential People in the Field of Foreign Policy" by the World Affairs Councils of America.

In 2007, Sachs received the S Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.

From 2000 to 2001, Jeffrey Sachs was chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization and from 1999 to 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission established by the United States Congress.

Jeffrey Sachs has been an adviser to the WHO, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Program.

Jeffrey Sachs is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, the Fellows of the World Econometric Society, the Brookings Panel of Economists, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Board of Advisers of the Chinese Economists Society, among other international organizations.

Jeffrey Sachs holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru.

Jeffrey Sachs has lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford and Yale University and in Tel Aviv and Jakarta.

In July 2009, Jeffrey Sachs became a member of the Netherlands Development Organisation's International Advisory Board.

In 2016, Jeffrey Sachs became president of the Eastern Economic Association, succeeding Janet Currie.

In 2015, Jeffrey Sachs was awarded the Blue Planet Prize for his contributions to solving global environmental problems.

In May 2017 Jeffrey Sachs was awarded the Boris Mints Institute Prize for Research of Strategic Policy Solutions to Global Challenges.

In 2022 Jeffrey Sachs was awarded the Tang Prize in the category of sustainable development.

Jeffrey Sachs writes a monthly foreign affairs column for Project Syndicate, a nonprofit association of newspapers around the world that is circulated in 145 countries.

Jeffrey Sachs is a frequent contributor to such major publications as the Financial Times, Scientific American, Time and The Huffington Post.