Blue Planet Prize Story

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA in 1954. Detroit was the center of the American automobile industry. The city was vibrant, and young Jeff really loved living there.

The nineteen-fifties of Jeff's youth was also the time of the civil rights' movement, a movement started by African Americans (black Americans) who had faced discrimination in the United States since the country's foundation and were demanding the same rights that white Americans enjoyed. Jeff's father was a lawyer and deeply involved in the movement. Jeff's parents taught him that people should strive for fairness in society, so Jeff learned the importance of social justice from an early age.

In 1967, when Jeff was 13 years old, a race riot that erupted in Detroit cost many lives. This marked a turning point that brought change to Detroit and had a strong impact on Jeff at the end of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Journey to socialist countries

Traveling in the Soviet Union during his second year in high school helped to guide him toward his current pursuit. He encountered the world of socialism, which was completely different from the system he knew in the United States.

It was the 1970s, and the Cold War struggle between socialism and capitalism was still on. Jeff was 15 years old and wondered what made a good society, and why there were different systems in different regions. Jeff continued asking himself these same questions as the years passed.

To the world of economics

In 1978, Jeff visited India for a month as part of his graduate school program. It was during this trip that he saw the country's extreme poverty and realized that it was much more serious than he had imagined. He wondered how such an attractive country with its vast area and old civilization had become poor, and wondered what he could do to help it break out of its poverty. He hoped to someday understand such problems and help them to find a way out. This made him realize the critical importance of actually visiting places to see problems with his own eyes.

2. Examining Countries