Donald Kennedy
Bing Professor of Environmental Science
Stanford University President Emeritus

Donald Kennedy received A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard. His research interests were originally in animal behavior and neurobiology - in particular, the mechanisms by which animals generate and control patterned motor output. His research group explored the relationship between central "commands" and sensory feedback in the control of locomotion, escape, and other behaviors in invertebrates. Among the issues considered were: how environmental variables that could not be "anticipated" by the animal's genetic endowment could be compensated in fixed behavioral patterns; whether certain circuit arrangements for a given class of motor output were favored in different evolutionary outcomes; and how self-induced sensory stimuli during the course of movements are discriminated from exogenous inputs. Although these interests remain, they have been overtaken by a deeper concern with ecology and environmental policy.

In 1977 Dr. Kennedy took a 2-1/2 year leave to serve as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This followed an increasing academic interest in regulatory policy regarding health and the environment, which included the chairmanship of a National Academy of Sciences study on alternatives to pesticide use and membership on the World Food and Nutrition Study. Following his return to Stanford in 1979, Dr. Kennedy served for a year as Provost and for twelve years as President. During that time he continued to work on health and environmental policy issues, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Effects Institute (a non-profit research organization devoted to mobile source emissions), Clean Sites, Inc. (a similar organization devoted to toxic waste cleanup), and the California Nature Conservancy.

His present research program, conducted partially through the Institute of International Studies, consists of interdisciplinary studies on the development of policies regarding such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies.

Dr. Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His former Stanford Ph.D. students now hold tenured faculty positions at Cornell, Emory, Stanford, Washington, and Yale Universities, Smith and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and the Universities of California, Connecticut, Texas, and Washington.

Selected Publications

Kennedy, D.  2001.  Going It Alone.  Science  293:1221.

Kennedy, D. 1993. Making choices in the research university. Daedalus 122:127-156.

Kennedy, D. 1985. Government policies and the cost of doing research. Science 227:480-484.

Kennedy, D. and R.A. Frick. 1983. Inhibition of mechanosensory neurons in the crayfish: III. Presynaptic inhibition of primary afferents by a central proprioceptive tract. J. Comp. Physiol. 53:443-453.

Kennedy, D. 1982. The social sponsorship of innovation. Technology in Society 4:253-265.

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