Few and Far Between

I just picked up a copy of John Bellamy Foster’s Ecological Revolution. (This is not a review of the book, not yet anyway.) In the preface, Foster thanks his former graduate student, Brett Clark, who studied environmental sociology with him at the University of Oregon. Brett went on to become a professor of sociology at North Carolina State, and he wrote four of the chapters in Foster’s book.

That really struck me: the idea that a grad student was a continuing source of inspiration to an experienced professor, that a grad student could write four chapters of a widely read book under the auspices of one of the best and brightest in the field. That grad student is now a professor, but obviously a vital link in this very thin chain of ecological wisdom across North America. There are very few us out there, so few that each one of us is critically important to the whole effort, including, and perhaps even especially, grad students.

John Bellamy Foster was recently interviewed on Democracy Now along with Grace Lee Boggs, on September 17, 2009. Boggs and Foster commented on the ongoing financial crisis in the US.