Rob Verchick

Robert Verchick is a legal scholar in climate change and disaster policy who designed climate-resilience programs in the Obama administration. He is the Gauthier-St. Martin Eminent Scholar and Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans and is a senior fellow in disaster resilience at Tulane University. His most recent book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience (Columbia University Press, 2023), empowers nonexpert readers to face the climate crisis and shows what we can do to adapt and thrive.

At Radcliffe, he is writing a book for nonexperts about how we can harness the power of government, science, and local wisdom to rescue the oceans from climate breakdown.

Verchick has written more than 60 articles and four books, including the award-winning Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World (Harvard University Press, 2010). He has taught as a visiting professor at Aarhus University, Peking University, and Yale University. In 2009 and 2010, he served in the Obama administration as deputy associate administrator for policy at the US Environmental Protection Agency. He serves as president of the board of the Center for Progressive Reform and is a member of Governor John Bel Edward’s Climate Initiatives Task Force, in Louisiana. His podcast, Connect the Dots, is in its seventh season. Verchick graduated with distinction and honors from Stanford University and with honors from Harvard Law School.