Board President; Gauthier - St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law
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Robert R.M. Verchick holds the Gauthier ~ St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans, is the Faculty Director of the Center for Environmental Law at Loyola, and is a Senior Fellow in Disaster Resilience Leadership, Tulane University. He is the President of the Center for Progressive Reform.
Verchick is an expert in climate change law, disaster law, and environmental regulation. In 2009 and 2010, he served in the Obama administration as Deputy Associate Administrator for Policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In that role he helped develop climate adaptation policy for the EPA and served on President Obama’s Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. In the fall of 2012, he researched climate adaptation policies in India as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, supported by a Fulbright Award.
His work has appeared in many venues, including the California Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, and the environmental law journals at Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. He is an author of three books, including the award-winning, Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World (Harvard University Press 2010). Professor Verchick has taught as a visitor at several schools, including Peking University (China) and Aarhus University (Denmark), and has received several teaching awards. He has lectured across the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Verchick’s most recent book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage, was released in April 2023. He is currently at work on a new book on oceans and coasts.
