David Orr

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Senior Adviser to the President at Oberlin College. He is the author of seven books, including Earth in Mind and Ecological Literacy, and co-editor of three others. The recipient of seven honorary degrees and other national awards, he has served on the Boards of many organizations, including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and Bioneers.

Orr regards environmentalism as a matter of ethical design, involving our responsibility and relationship to the earth we've inherited and the earth we will bequeath.

His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. In 1987 Orr organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses, helping  to launch the green campus movement. In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century.”

Orr holds a B.A. from Westminster College (1965), an M.A. from Michigan State University (1966), and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1973).

 Read David Orr's E. F. Schumacher Lecture, Environmental Literacy: Education as if the Earth Mattered.