March 09, 2017

Robert Musil, president and chief executive office of the Rachel Carson Council, will present the lecture Rachel Carson: Is Her Environmental Legacy Still Relevant? at Susquehanna University on Wednesday, March 22.

The lecture will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Faylor Lecture Hall in Fisher Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

The Rachel Carson Council was founded in 1965 and promotes the ecological vision of the late conservationist Rachel Carson, linking environmental, health and social issues into a single, unified approach to today’s critical sustainability issues.

Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring, documented the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. This and other of her writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Musil is also a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, School of Public Affairs, American University. There, he teaches about climate change and American environmental politics.

From 1992-2006, Musil was the longest-serving executive director and chief executive officer of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He is a graduate of Yale and Northwestern universities and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and has been a visiting honorary fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and of Pembroke College, Cambridge University.

Musil is the author of Hope for a Heated Planet: How Americans Are Fighting Global Warming and Building a Better Future (2009), Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America’s Environment (2014), and Washington in Springtime: A Nature Journal for a Changing Capital (2016). All three will be available for sale after the lecture, and Musil will be available to sign copies.