Politics Faculty

Ronnie D Lipschutz
  • Title
    • Emeritus Professor of Politics
    • President & Co-director, Sustainable Systems Research Foundation
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Politics Department
  • Phone
    831-588-7625
  • Email
  • Fax
    831-459-3125
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Remote work location, 2861 Mission Street, Suite 247, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
  • Office Hours Please contact via email
  • Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Energy, Environmental Policy, Foreign Policy, Globalization, International and Global Affairs, Politics, Science and Technology

Research Interests

Lipschutz has researched and written on a range of topics related to global political economy, including U.S. global economic and military policy and strategy, changing conceptions and practices of security, changing forms of war, global governance, global civil society and corporate social responsibility, environmental politics, energy and resources, sustainability, political economy and popular culture and the governmentality of biosurveillance.  At the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation, he is engaged in projects with local impact.

Biography, Education and Training

Ronnie D. Lipschutz received his Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from UC-Berkeley in 1987 and an SM in Physics from MIT in 1978. He was a faculty member in the Politics Department from 1990-2020. He is now President and Co-director of the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz.

From 2012-18, Lipschutz was Provost of Rachel Carson College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During Fall term 2011, he was a Velux Visiting Professor in the Department of Business and Politics at the Copenhagen Business School. He was a visiting Professor of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London during 2009-10, and a Visiting Professor and Fellow in the Department of International Relations and Politics during 2002. 


Lipschutz's most recent books are Unhappy in Its Own Way: An Institutional Biography of UC Santa Cruz (2020; available in pdf at https://sustainablesystemsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Unhappy.pdf) and, with Doreen Stabinsky, Environmental Politics for a Changing World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

CV is available at https://sustainablesystemsfoundation.org/a-lipschutz-vita-20/

Honors, Awards and Grants

 Inaugural holder of the Robert Headley Chair in Integral Ecology and Environmental Justice in Rachel Carson College (2017-19).

 Acquired an endowment for Rachel Carson College at UC-Santa Cruz from the Helen & Will Webster Foundation ($4,500,000) and a Presidential Chair ($1,000,000).

 During term of provost of College Eight/Rachel Carson College, raised over $200,000 from public and private sources in support of student education and projects.

 PI (with Sue Carter & Ali Adabi), NSF I-corps project, 2016-17 ($50,000).

 PI (with Regina Lanhout), STEM Success class project, 2017, UC Office of the President ($37,000).