[3] Adams was born in Birmingham, Michigan,[4] attended the Holderness School,[5] and began undergraduate studies at Colorado College.

[5] He subsequently spent a year in France as a Fulbright fellow,[citation needed] studying at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the École Normale Supérieure before earning a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1982.

He earned his nickname, Bro, from his father, in memory of a friend who died in World War II.

[7] Adams authored a PhD dissertation in history of consciousness titled Digging in the same place: an essay in the political and social philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1982).

Adams served as a director of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network from 2002 to 2012, Wittenberg University from 2007 to 2011, and the Unitil Corporation since 2009.