Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D., is an author, anthropologist and activist. From 1972 to 2014 he served as founding professor of anthropology at Florida International University in Miami, where he taught a course on “Psychedelics and Culture.” Dr. Brown is coauthor with Julie M. Brown of The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity (Inner Traditions, 2016). He is also coauthor of “Sacred Plans and the Gnostic Church,” Journal of Ancient History (2014) and of the forthcoming “Entheogens in Christian Art,” Journal of Psychedelic Studies (2019). Brown received his B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Antioch College and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University.
Over the past decades, Dr. Brown has worked to create positive social and environmental change through public policy organizations. In the 1960s, Dr. Brown coordinated Cesar Chavez’s Grape Boycott on behalf of California farm workers. In the 1980s, he worked with Business Executives for National Security, an organization of Fortune 1000 executives that lobbied to prevent nuclear war and end the Cold War. From 2013-2018, he coordinated the World Business Academy’s Safe Energy Project to close the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants in California. He serves as an Academy Fellow and Director.
Dr. Brown is co-author of Profiles in Power: The Antinuclear Movement and the Dawn of the Solar Age (Simon & Schuster, 1997), and of numerous articles on energy policy and social change. He is co-author with Rinaldo S. Brutoco and James A. Cusumano of Freedom from Mid-East Oil (2007), which describes how America can significantly decrease dependence on foreign oil in ten years.
