Donaldson, Peter J.

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DONALDSON, Peter J.

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Fordham University, B.A.; Brown University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Population Council, New York Headquarters, One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017.

CAREER: Population Council, New York, NY, council staff associate based in Thailand, 1973-75, and South Korea, 1975-77, regional director for South and East Asia, based in Thailand, 1989-94, vice president and director of International Programs Division, 2003-04, acting president, 2004-05, president, 2005—; Family Health International, Research Triangle Park, NC, director of development and government relations, 1977-85; National Research Council, Washington, DC, director of Committee on Population, 1985-89; Population Reference Bureau, Washington, DC, chief executive officer, c. 1994-2003. Served on board of directors of Population Association of America; member of council of population section, American Sociological Association. Member of advisory committee, Institute of Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Bangkok.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Yunshik Chang) Population Change in the Pacific Region: Papers Presented in the Symposia on Pacific Populations during the Thirteenth Pacific Science Congress, Thirteenth Pacific Science, Pacific Science Association Congress (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1975.

(Editor, with Luigi Mastroianni, Jr., and Thomas J. Kane) Developing New Contraceptives: Obstacles and Opportunities, National Academy Press (Washington, DC), 1990.

Nature against Us: The United States and the World Population Crisis, 1965-1980, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1990.

Also author or coauthor of more than sixty scientific and popular articles on population, development, Asian affairs, and other issues.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter J. Donaldson has worked in the field of population control for more than three decades and has written extensively on the topic. His book Nature against Us: The United States and the World Population Crisis, 1965-1980 was published in 1990 and relates the story of U.S. policy towards population growth in other countries, primarily those in the Third World.

The time period covered in Nature against Us coincides with the leadership of Reimert T. Ravenholt as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. During his tenure, Ravenholt steered policy almost entirely in the direction of promoting contraception programs in Third World countries. Michael Micklin, writing in Social Forces, felt that Donaldson offered "two explanations" for the involvement of the United States in "less-developed country (LDC) population control programs." One was the desire to truly ameliorate the suffering of the world's poor. The other, in Micklin's words, was that "U.S. policymakers recognized the strategic advantages inherent in slowing the rapid growth of LDC populations, including … political and economic stability, access to natural resources, and the U.S. image in the context of the Cold War." Kurt W. Back wrote in Contemporary Sociology that "Donaldson makes an important contribution to the history of population problems as well as examining the political process, domestic as well as worldwide."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Contemporary Sociology, July, 1991, Kurt W. Back, review of Nature against Us: The United States and the World Population Crisis, 1965-1980 pp. 588-589.

National Catholic Reporter, May 24, 1991, Elizabeth Sobo, "How to Balance Third World Lives against U.S. Interests," p. 10.

Population Today, November-December, 2002, Peter J. Donaldson, "A Letter from ORP's President," p. 1.

Social Forces, June, 1992, Michael Micklin, review of Nature against Us, pp. 1149-1151.