Jeffrey David Sachs (/sæks/ SAKS; born November 5, 1954)[4] is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University,[5][6] where he was former director of The Earth Institute.

[10][11] Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger.

[17] He graduated from Oak Park High School and attended Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1976.

[36][independent source needed] The government of Poland awarded Sachs one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit.

Since his work in post-communist countries, Sachs has turned to global issues of economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy and environmental sustainability.

According to Munk, people in Sachs's inner circle affectionately called him a "shit disturber," someone whose ego was offset by a selfless genius and a penchant for challenging orthodoxies.

[46] Critics have said that the programme had not included suitable controls to allow an accurate determination of whether the MVP methods were responsible for any observed gains in economic development.

Previously a special adviser to secretary-general António Guterres,[10][11] Sachs is an advocate for the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals which build upon and supersede the MDGs.

He was photographed with Matt Damon and developed a friendship with international celebrities Bono and Angelina Jolie, who traveled to Africa with Sachs to witness the progress of the Millennium Villages.

[54][55] According to Stuart Lau and Luanna Muniz writing in Politico, Sachs is a "long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony and embracing the rise of China.

"[61] Weisbrot stated that the authors "could not prove those excess deaths were the result of sanctions, but said the increase ran parallel to the imposition of the measures and an attendant fall in oil production.

[62] Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Sachs said the COVID-19 lab leak theory, which posited the SARS-CoV-2 virus was released from a Chinese laboratory, as "reckless and dangerous" and said that right-wing politicians pointing fingers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology could "push the world to conflict...

[42] In spring 2020, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, appointed Sachs as chair of its COVID-19 Commission, whose goals were to provide recommendations for public health policy and improve the practice of medicine.

"[66] In August 2022, Sachs appeared on the podcast of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, where he accused officials such as Anthony Fauci of "not being honest" about the origins of COVID.

"[68] Virologist David Robertson said the suggestion of US laboratory involvement was "wild speculation" and that "it's really disappointing to see such a potentially influential report contributing to further misinformation on such an important topic."

In the same article, Angela Rasmussen of the Canadian Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization said that the release of the report may have been "one of The Lancet's most shameful moments regarding its role as a steward and leader in communicating crucial findings about science and medicine.

"[69] In May 2022, Sachs said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 would be hard to beat and that Finland's moves to join NATO would undermine a negotiated peace: "All of this talk of defeating Russia, to my mind, is reckless.

"[70] In June 2022, he co-signed an open letter calling for a "ceasefire" in the war, questioning Western countries' continuing military support for Ukraine.

[71] In 2022, Sachs appeared several times on one of the top-rated shows funded by the Russian government, hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, to call for Ukraine to negotiate and step away from its "maximalist demands" of removing Russia from Ukrainian territory.

[74] Nina Munk, author of the 2013 book The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, says that "sometimes good intentions have left people even worse off than before".

[75][76] Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief at The Globalist, and James D. Bindenagel, a former U.S. ambassador, wrote that "In his books and articles, Jeff Sachs has done much to frame and popularize the language and thinking to push a sustainable development agenda on the world stage.

[79] Commenting on Sachs's $120 million effort to aid Africa, American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux says these temporary measures failed to create sustained improvements.

Theroux says that the project's latrines were clogged and overflowing, the dormitories it built quickly became dilapidated, and the livestock market it established ignored local customs and was shut down within a few months.

He says that an angry Dertu citizen filed a 15-point written complaint against Sachs's operation, claiming it "created dependence" and that "the project is supposed to be bottom top approached but it is visa [sic] versa.

"[80] According to the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, Jeffrey Sachs is one of the architects of "disaster capitalism" after his recommendations in Bolivia, Poland and Russia led to millions of people ending up in the streets.

[81][page needed] In December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawaei, was arrested in Canada at the request of the U.S., which was seeking her extradition to face charges of allegedly violating sanctions against Iran.

[84] In their 2020 book Hidden Hand, Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg commented on one of Sachs's articles in which he accused the U.S. government of maligning Huawei under hypocritical pretenses.

Hamilton and Ohlberg wrote that Sachs's article would be more meaningful and influential if he did not have a close relationship with Huawei, including his previous endorsement of the company's "vision of our shared digital future."

[92] Also in 2007, he received the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award and the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to society.

[101] Sachs writes a monthly foreign affairs column for Project Syndicate, a nonprofit association of newspapers around the world that is circulated in 145 countries.