Special Guest Speaker

Carl Safina

Carl Safina’s writing about the living world has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; Pew and Guggenheim Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He earned a PhD in ecology from Rutgers studying seabirds, then spent a decade working to ban high-seas drift nets and to overhaul U.S. fishing policy. He has pursued his love of wildlife on every continent. Now Safina mainly writes about the human relationship with the natural world.  Safina is now the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chaired the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and runs the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean. His writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, Audubon, and on the Web at National Geographic News and Views, Huffington Post, CNN.com, and elsewhere. He is author of the classic book, Song for the Blue Ocean. Carl’s seventh book is Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel. He lives on Long Island, New York with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends.